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MEMORIAL 



Samuel Mills Capron, 

Born May 15th, 1832.— Died Jan. 4th, lij'j^. 



y^DITED BY 

Jo; nf f W I C H E L L . 



Rari quippe bo7ii: ?mmerus vix est totidem quot 

Thebaruni portce vel divitis ostia Niii. 

' Juvenal. 



', J 5 >' > J ' ' ^ ' J ^ ^ • 



3 S ' 5 5 5 5 3 3 J -"i ^ ' : 



HARTFORD : 

The Case, Lockwood & Brainaru Co. Printers. 
1874- 



^ 3oi>o 

■01 






TO THE PUPILS OF 

SAMUEL M. CAPRON, 

TO WHOM HE FREELY GAVE 

THE STRENGTH OF HIS LIFE, 

AND WHOSE WELL-DOING AND ASSURED AFFECTION 

WERE HIS BEST EARTHLY REWARD, 

THIS MEMORIAL IS DEDICATED 

BY THE EDITOR. 



CONTENTS. 



P*GE. 

Biographical Sketch, ....... 

By the Rev. W. B. Capron. 
Samuel M. Capron— The Man and The Teacher, - - 31 

By Margaret A. Blythe. 
Scholarship and Character, - - - . . - i;8 

By Prof. Thomas A. Thacher. 
Obituary Notices of Press and Pulpit, - - . - 66 

Funeral Services — Addresses of Mr. Twichell and Mayor 

Robinson, - - - . . . - 88 

In Memoriam — A Poem, - - . . - roc 

By M. A. B. 
At the High School, - - . . . - 108 

The Holy Grail, - - - . . . - 114 

By Abby M. Williams. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

BY 

THE REV. W. B. CAPRON, 

Of Miina Madura, India. 



UxBRiDGE, Mass., March i8, 1874. 
My dear : 

Instead of preparing an introductory chapter, as you 
suggested, for the memorial of my brother, it would be 
easier and more natural to me to write you some 
account of his early life, or, rather, of his life on the 
home side, and let you use what you think best. 

Among the precious things treasured up in memory 
from his death-bed, is his message to his mother — *' If I 
do not see mother, she knows that I love her. I have 
had a world of enjoyment at home, a world of it." I 
dare say that you will find in this simple-hearted and 
affectionate message a part of the secret of his happy 
and useful life. There are thousands of happy Christian 



6 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

homes in New England, and thousands of Christian 
young men and young women go forth from them to fill 
places of usefulness for which they are fitted, and to 
which Providence calls them. Happy the parents 
whose children respond to their love, and fulfil their 
fond hopes ; and happy he, who, finding a sphere for 
which he has been carefully prepared, and where he is 
appreciated and esteemed, turns back with gratitude to 
the hand, which, more than any other, guided him 
through the perils of youth, and hardly let go of him 
when he became the loved and trusted leader of others. 

My brother was born in this town, the birthplace 
also of our parents,* and the home of our childhood, 
the 15th of May, 1832. He was christened Samuel 
John Mills, — a name which I remember to have 
suggested and struggled for — and oh ! the proud 
satisfaction when that missionary name was fairly 
adopted into the family. 

And Samuel's childhood was in beautiful corres- 
pondence with his saintly name. The then recent 
conversion of both father and mother, in the revival of 
1 83 1, and their deep interest in the church and Sab- 
bath school, and in all moral and religious enterprises, 
are sufficient to account for Samuel's early interest and 
enthusiasm in all such objects. He was the little 
preacher of the family. Standing in a chair near the 

* William Cargill Capron and Chloe Day, Father is trying to prove 
his descent from Donald Cargill, the martyr. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 7 

kitchen window, and with his basket of books on the 
folded table at his right, he would go through a public 
service in the most serious manner — prayer, reading of 
the scriptures, singing, preaching, the benediction, every 
part complete, and, as the phrase is, all well sustained 
from the beginning to the end. His clear and earnest 
voice still rings in his mother's ears, " Oh Lord, send 
down thy Holy Spirit to-day." A looker-on would have 
thought it strange that a child of three, or so, could 
read, but though his eyes followed the narrative, and he 
turned the leaves accurately, it was only a recital of 
what his quick memory had caught from the frequent 
reading of others. He would often go to his father s 
place of prayer, and soon after, when his little whip was 
missing, it would be found by the side of the chair 
where he had knelt to pray. When reproved for going 
to the river side, and told that he might fall into the 
water, where he had been cutting sticks, he replied, 
" No, I shan't, I have been praying." No doubt the 
little books which he read brought the praying- 
children through all right, and he did not doubt that 
the same would be done for him. His mother remem- 
bers that in his father's absence, when with so many 
men at the table, she was not quite equal to the duty, 
Samuel pleaded to be permitted to ask a blessing. She 
remembers his fidelity at private prayer, and how trou- 
bled she was on account of his exposure to the cold in 
this way before retiring at night. He loved none of his 



8 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

books SO much as his little leather-covered Testament, 
which he read much, and had filled with slips of paper 
as book-marks. Whenever he found anything about the 
power or love of God, he could not rest satisfied until 
he had shared it with some one else, and many a time 
he followed his mother about the house till she could 
stop and listen to his newly-discovered treasure. 

The temperance reform took a strong hold of his 
feelings, and he ,was indulged in being permitted to 
attend the meetings when almost too young to take 
care of himself. Once, he said, he was waked up by 
falling off the seat, long after the meeting had closed, 
and found that he was locked in, and had to escape 
through the window. At another time his father 
sought for him, as he did not return in season, and 
found him among those who had gathered about the 
lecturer after the meeting. He had become possessed 
of a dollar in some way, and was subscribing for a tem- 
perance paper. 

His interest in religious things took him to all 
special meetings, and glad was he when he could 
accompany his father to conferences and other gather- 
ings, where he hoped he might be converted. A few 
weeks before his death he was telling his children that 
when he was a little boy he heard of a revival of religion 
in Providence, and he teased so hard to go that his father 
and mother put him aboard the stage, and sent him off 
alone twenty-one miles to be converted. " But I was not 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 9 

converted then," he said. This romantic incident, and 
perhaps the disappointment, are easily explained. He 
had an uncle and aunt in Providence, to whose care and 
Christian good judgment he was sent, and as safely en- 
trusted as if he had been at home. He found his way 
to the meetings, and was found among the inquirers, 
and told his errand. But the c^ood minister, or srood 
brother, who heard it, had his balance upset by the 
story, and could not resist the temptation to thrill the 
audience with the announcement that here was a little 
boy who had come all the way from Uxbridge to Provi- 
dence to be converted ; and having thus done what he 
could to dis]3el the influences of the Holy Spirit from 
the mind of his young inquirer, he probably concluded 
by asking the Christians present to pray for him. 

Samuel always referred his conversion to the period 
when he was a member of Phillips Academy, at An- 
dover, Mass., the last year of his preparation for college. 
As every new history of a conversion is instructive, I 
quote a few sentences from his letters in reference to 
that event. " Could you believe me if I told you I 
hoped I had found the Saviour } When I came back 
after vacation I did so with the determination that, with 
God's assistance, I would become a Christian before the 
term should close. The second Sabbath in the term I 
spent in a very thoughtful manner. It was the last day 
of the year. Prof. Park, who had not preached for two 
years before, preached that day. The sermon in the 



lO BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

afternoon on ' What is time,' (text, Rev. lo, 6,) was the 
best I ever heard. It was after hearing such a sermon 
that I sincerely hope I gave my heart to God. In the 
evening one of my class-mates called in to see me, and 
encouraged me, so that I began to hope that I had 
truly met with a change." 

On the following Tuesday evening, it appears that he 
came out in a prayer-meeting of the students. Two 
months later, he writes, " How blessed is it to have a 
hope in Christ ! Would that I could find language to 
express in any feeble degree the joy which I have ex- 
perienced within a few weeks. I have felt a joy in the 
service of Christ which I never dreamed of before." He 
wrote his mother (Feb. 27, 1849) ^^^^^ ^^ ^^"^^ been 
serious for a long time, and that when he came to An- 
dover he felt that, unless he selected proper companions, 
his religious feelings would soon vanish, and that he 
became intimate with none of whose character he was 
doubtful. This, he said, had much to do in leading his 
thoughts to things of the highest moment. He united 
with the church in Uxbridge in the following Septem- 
ber, his church relations being transferred to the Cen- 
ter Church, Hartford, in September, 1853, and to the 
Asylum Hill Church in August, 1866. 

Samuel's boyhood was remarkable for some firm and 
lasting friendships. He had a sincere and honest inter- 
est in the welfare of his friends, and the boys who 
turned to him as a congenial spirit, and those who 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. I I 



found in him a refuge from the various discomforts and 
persecutions of that somewhat awkward age never for- 
got him to the end of hfe. It is indeed surprising how 
many, inckiding not only the intimate friends of col- 
lege and of his subsequent life, but also those who had 
known him best in boyhood, have written since his 
death that they had lost in him their best-trusted and 
most valued friend. 

The completion of my college course found father in 
circumstances which would prevent his giving to both 
his other sons the advantage of a college education. 
With prudence and a union of forces, one could be put 
through. Which should it be ? If the question had 
been left to be decided by lot, it might well have been 
a matter of painful anxiety. My father took the course 
of offering the prize first to the elder, who considered 
it, and declined it in favor of his brother, and who 
since, in his natural pride at Samuel's career, has had 
the luxury of thinking that there is, after all, a blessed- 
ness in giving instead of receiving. 

Samuel was so well along in his studies before leav- 
ing the Uxbridge Academy, that one year of instruc- 
tion at Andover— that senior year, under Mr. S. H. 
Taylor, which none of the graduates of that institution 
forget or fail to appreciate — was sufficient to give him 
a good preparation for Yale College, where he entered 
at seventeen years of age, in the Fall of 1849. 

College life passed very pleasantly, no doubt. With 



12 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

a good preparation and with a naturally well-balanced 
mind, study came easy to him. Though specially well 
fitted in the languages he had a taste for the mathe- 
matics, and found a luxury in branches which so many 
students consider dry and uninteresting. It would ap- 
pear that he took a high rank in his class, with only 
reasonable fidelity to study — a result which I refer to 
his unusual power of application of the mind to books, 
or to the thing in hand, from his very childhood. Es- 
pecially in childhood it was an absorption which caused 
himself and others occasional trouble. When buried 
in his books he seemed oblivious to all noise and- con- 
fusion. A dozen persons might pass through the room 
without attracting his attention, and if he was wanted, 
it took a second or third call to rouse him. Strangely 
enough, such concentration of mind and an excellent 
memory are not inconsistent with occasional forgetful- 
ness — a misfortune which, in his childhood, probably, 
and also in later life, sometimes precipitated him into 
trouble. But much as Samuel enjoyed college life, as 
his room-mate and very intimate friend of those four 
years would probably testify, he lived much at home. 
In his Junior year he writes, " Although I am sur- 
rounded with all the advantages and pleasures of col- 
lege life, my thoughts wander home very, very often, 
and I sometimes wish almost that I had never left that 
good old place." " It is pleasant to be here, but it is 
nothing like the calm, sweet enjoyment of the family 
circle." 



BIOGRAPHICx\L SKETCH. I 3 

No subject occupies his letters so much as the flower 
garden and the fruit. The beautiful plan of the garden 
is his, and the schemes for its imj^rovement occupied 
pretty largely his summer vacation, and went far over 
into the Fall. Then it was barrels of apples from home 
— better than any fruit that could be bought in Con- 
necticut, (and quite likely more expensive,) and one 
would suppose that no event of college life was so im- 
portant. I have seen no allusions in his letters to col- 
lege honors, or to his prizes, though some volumes of 
mathematics and classics, containing the president's 
autograph, turn up in his library. 

A desire to help himself to some extent, and per- 
haps a fancy to make some preliminary experiments in 
teaching, led him to accept, for the most of his Junior 
year, a position in Mr. Russell's school, which occupied 
his time for several evenings of the week, and some- 
what on the Sabbath. It is only worthy of mention 
here, because he there discovered the secret of school 
government, which served him in after years, and upon 
a much more important stage. It was a basis of 
thorough and accurate scholarship, interest in the wel- 
fare of his pupils, and an affectionate but not undigni- 
fied familiarity, fairness but firmness of discipline, and 
an unsleeping fidelity to his duty as an instructor. 
Not that he was so egotistical as to put anything of 
this sort on record, but one can infer it all from his 
familiar letters home. He tosses off a mathematical 



14 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

problem, proposed to him by a pupil, and discovers 
afterwards that it was intended as a test of his ability. 
He is facile in translation, and finds that none of 
these off-hand efforts are returned to him. 

He was interested also in the spiritual welfare of the 
pupils. He says (June, 1852), " I am now so well 
acquainted with them all, that I can occasionally speak 
to them upon the subject of religion. There are some 
well-disposed boys, who seem only to lack the one 
thing needful, and have very good ideas about religion 
too. I hope that some of them may be led to Christ." 
But his extra duties proved too burdensome to him, 
and he dropped them at the end of Junior year. 

It was at this period that the question of a business 
for life naturally came up, and it is very pleasant to me 
to find that he had some queryings at least as to his 
duty to the heathen. In the letter last quoted from he 
writes, " The most intimate friend* I have here in New 
Haven expects to go as a missionary to the Armenians, 
and urges me very hard to go with him. Do you think 
it may be my duty to go } As the case stands now, I 
shall probably never study theology, but he wishes me 
to go as a teacher. You know that the schools among 
the Armenians are already far advanced, and they will 
soon have colleges there." He writes in July, " I do 
not have any desire to be a doctor or a lawyer, and 

* Probably Mr. Harding, now missionary of the A. B. C. F. M., in 
Bombay. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. I 5 

hardly any to be a New England minister, so that I 
think I shall fall back on my original plan, and try to 
make a teacher. I like that profession very well so far, 
and I think I could do tolerably well in it." 

If his name seemed to hint a missionary life, it was, 
after all, a prophecy not unfulfilled. It was my own 
boyish enthusiasm for missions that had given him the 
name, and now, twenty years later, I had been started 
out of my forgetfulness, I trust by the Spirit of God, 
and was about to exchange a most delightful home and 
sphere in Hartford for service in the foreign missionary 
field. 

In August, 1852, 1 resigned the post of master of the 
Hopkins Grammar School, to take effect at the end of 
the following term, intending then to join the Theolo- 
gical Seminary, at Andover, where I had already 
entered my name. Before the end of the term, how- 
ever, the ti-ustees of the grammar school had fixed upon 
Samuel as my successor, and, rather than that he 
should leave college, I remained in Hartford till his 
graduation, in the Summer of 1853, and he succeeded 
me in the Fall. 

It is not for me to narrate the events of those twenty 
years of laborious and prosperous scliool life in Hart- 
ford. I left him in the High School building, on Asy- 
lum St., in charge of the old Grammar School, and the 
classical department of the High School, and on my 
return from India I found him at the head of both 



ID BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

schools, in the new and splendid building on Hopkins 
St., which is deservedly a monument of his enterprise 
and perseverance. 

The ten years spent as master of the Grammar 
School were comparatively unbroken, except by two 
seasons of severe illness. In September, 1863, borne 
down by the weight of affliction, he resigned his posi- 
tion, and sailed for Europe for an absence of a year, 
returning in November, 1864. 

This was in the midst of our civil war, and at the 
period of the most alarming depression of the currency. 
His resignation had not been accepted by the Trustees 
of the Grammar School, but feeling that the funds of 
the school, though affording a fair salary in ante-war 
times, would not now give a comfortable support, and 
being urged to engage in the business of manufactur- 
ing, he left Hartford and removed to his native place. 
It should be said, also, that he had brought from Eu- 
rope a stock of vigorous health, which his previous ex- 
perience made him disinclined to risk in the confine- 
ment of school teaching. 

But the subject came up again, and in a new aspect. 
After a time he was followed to Uxbridge by a com- 
mittee of the High School, who contemplated a reor- 
ganization of the school, and urged him to accept the 
post of principal — a post of much more than his former 
influence and responsibility, and now attended with an 
offer of nearly double his former salary. This made 



BIOGRyVPHICAL SKETCH. 1/ 

him take the subject again into consideration, as if a 
new taking up the question of a business for Hfe, and 
the result was that he resolved to give himself again to 
the business of teaching. He had spent the winter in 
Uxbridge, and returned to Hartford in April, 1865. 

This was at the close of the war, and, the times favor- 
ing, the High School took a new start. Pupils poured 
in, and it was not long before we heard that the build- 
ing on Asylum St., one of the best for its time, was too 
strait for the occupants. Business also was increasing, 
and the site was too noisy for a school, not to say that 
it was worth much more than the original cost and ex- 
penditure for business purposes. The result was the 
sale of the old home of the High School, and the erec- 
tion of the present building, begun in 1868, and com- 
pleted in 1869, at an expense of $160,000. 

On his first coming to Hartford from college Samuel 
was received into the family of Rev. Dr. Hawes, where 
I had found a home for six years, or nearly the whole 
period of my residence in the city. But with the pur- 
pose, as we have seen, of taking up teaching as a pro- 
fession, he was soon looking for a home of his own, and 
a very youthful, almost childhood friendship having 
sufficiently ripened, he married Miss Eunice M. Chapin, 
in November, 1854. 

And Samuel was most happy in his home. All the 
blessings with which a busy memory surrounded the 
home of his childhood, were realized over again in 



I« BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

his own home at the cottage in Hawthorn St. Children 
were born — Helen Maria, in March, 1858, and Alice 
Louise, in March, 1862. It is the painting that hangs 
now in the sitting room. But the pictures from their 
father's pen, as we received them in India, were even 
more beautiful. It has often occurred to me that, if 
an incognito were possible, I should like the privilege 
of publishing some of those letters under the title, 
" Home Scenes from Overland Letters," . or, "Nellie's 
Life, as gathered from the Home Letters of a Mission- 
ary." You know the sequel — that fatal visitation of 
scarlet fever — but in order that you may know Samuel 
better, let me quote from his own account, written two 
weeks after the children's death : 

UxBRiDCxE, January 25, 1863. 
My Dear Brother, 

Nellie and Alice lie side by side over in the 
cemetery. We laid them down to rest amid a violent storm. The sky 
was black with clouds, which poured torrents of rain upon us, and the 
wind blew a gale. Oh how gloomy and desolate was the scene. It 
was "the land of darkness as darkness itself." 

But, blessed be God, it was all bright above. Up through our tears, 
and through the thick, overhanging clouds, we could see heaven 
opened, and our loved ones safely at rest there. Nellie gave us all the 
evidence that we could desire in one so young, that she tenderly loved 
her Saviour. She called herself "Jesus' little lamb," and listened to no 
stories more intently than to those about Him. As to Alice, of course 
we cannot doubt that she has gone up to Him who said, " Suffer the 
little children to come unto me." Strange as it may seem, I had 
already become persuaded that Alice would develop a beautiful Chris- 
tian character. This was not merely because we had consecrated her, 
as we believed, entirely to Christ, and were hoping to train her up for 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 1 9 

His service, but I had observed ah'eady such traits of character that I 

could not help feeling and saying to E , that I believed she would 

make an uncommon Christian if she lived. 

Two sweeter children, it seems to me, were never given to any 
parents, and I feel profoundly grateful that we had such unmingled joy 
in them so long. Nellie was most truly a " sunbeam " in our house. 
She hardly knew what it was to be unhappy. During the two months 
that she spent at Whitinsville, though she longed to see mamma and 
papa, yet she was buoyant and cheerful all the time. She was thoroughly 
obedient, ardently affectionate, inexpressibly kind and tender, and 
withal bright and very sociable. Almost every day, the moment my 
head appeared above the brush by the railroad bank, the cottage door 
would open, and those dear little feet would come scampering toward 
me, carrying a little body which was a perfect picture of health and joy. 
Then, as I bent over to take her, she would clasp her little arms about 
my neck and kiss me, oh, so sweetly, and there she would cling until 
I set her down again on the doorstep. Meantime she would be telling 
me, as briskly as possible, the news about home, what her kitties had 
been doing, or what callers there had been, and inquire what I had 
brought, and what was the news about the war. In two minutes my 
cares and troubles about the school vanished, and I gave myself up to 
domestic happiness. 

Her affection for Alice was truly remarkable, and I had anticipated a 
world of pleasure in seeing those two sisters grow up together. They 
were widely different in their characteristics, but seemed peculiarly 
adapted to each other. Their separation seemed so dreadful that, when 
Nellie left us, I don't know but I wished that Alice might be with 
her. 

****** * * 

You know that one of our chief objects in moving into the city was 
that Nellie might attend the Sabbath school and church. Mrs. Brown 
had enrolled her name. Nellie had been anticipating it for months, and 
the next Sabbath after she was taken sick was to have been her first as 
a scholar in the infant class. 

Then Nellie was to hear Mr. Calkins' sermon to children, and it had 
been all arranged that at the time of the next sermon Alice should be 



20 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

baptized, (Mr. Calkins' first baptism,) and Nellie was to occupy one of 
the settees in front of the pews, where she could see everything. Oh, 
how she would have enjoyed it ! Instead of that, about an hour before 
Nellie's funeral, she was carried in her casket into the room where Alice 
was supposed to l)e almost dying, and there, with a little circle of 
friends standing about, sweet Alice was baptized. The service was 
somewhat formal, but more impressive on that account, as we were 
obliged to respond aloud, "I do," when Mr. Calkins asked us if we 
gave her entirely up to God. 

So, too, we had been anticipating the pleasure which Nellie would 
take in all the comforts of the new house, and she was with us just long 
enough to show how much she would have enjoyed it, and how cheerful 
she would have made it for us. Those two days were bright days. She 
caused us to observe at once the wonderful change which her presence 
made, as her clear voice and elastic step were heard everywhere. Her 
little soul was overflowing with joy, and she went caroling about, making 
us all happy. 

But undoubtedly the time was well chosen. She had been in the 
house just long enough to make herself pleasantly associated with every 
part of it, but not as at the cottage. There every spot of ground in the 
beautiful yard seems to be hallowed by some reminiscence of her, and 
the cottage was where she first began to waddle from one chair to 
another. We feel very grateful that we are not there now. 

* -*- ****** 

You may be ready to think that it was well she was removed from us, 
because we were so proud of her. If this be so, we are not at all 
conscious of it, * * * That we laved her too well is more than 
possible, and perhaps God has taken her to Himself in order to draw 
our own affections up thither. 

Yet I cannot but feel that we had sincerely given our children entirely 
to God, to do with them as He should deem best, and I bless His name 
that from the first of their sickness He has enabled us to feel fully 
resigned to His will. The rod falls upon us, indeed, with crushing 
. weight. Our treasures are taken from us. Our fondest hopes and 
favorite plans are dashed to the ground. 

******** 

But it was ordered, for some good purpose, that we should be left 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 

alone, to mourn the loss of all who could address us by those endearing 
names, "Mamma "and "Papa." (Nellie, by the way, gave a peculiar 
fascination to those words. She had a way of saying them which went 
straight to our hearts, and called out our tenderest affections.) * * * 
Yes, it was ordered in wisdom and in love. " I was dumb, I opened not 
my mouth; because thou didst it." Surely if we cannot confide in our 
Heavenly Father, we are without any refuge. We can but say, "Though 
He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." But the past will never be 
reproduced again. Henceforward we shall keep our eyes fixed upon 
the heavenly hills, for we have " laid up treasures " there. Our feet 
will hasten on to the stream which separates us from our precious 
children; too eager, I fear, at times, to press the farther bank. 

It is wonderfully comforting to feel, as we do most fully, that Nellie 
and Alice are really happier now than they could have been here. The 
change has been no loss to them. When Nellie was suffering intensely 
with the terrible disease, her piteous moans pierced me, like so many 
spears, with real agony. But when I saw a placid smile spreading over 
her sweet face, as she drew her last breath, I felt an unexpected and 
inexpressible relief to know that she was at rest, beyond the reach of 
sickness and pain. 

******** 

And here it flashes upon me that I shall have no occasion again to 
tell you how the dear children are. 

Well, these mysteries will be explained sometime, and we shall be 
led to adore the wisdom and love and grace of our blessed Master. 

This letter discloses to us something of the struggle 
in the tender heart of the father, between parental 
grief and Christian faith. He was determined that his 
heart should be right, but in the first agitation of 
bereavement he little knew what spirit he was of. And 
perhaps it is often so, when observing friends report of 
the bereaved that they seem to be wonderfully sus- 
tained. The summer found Samuel broken down in 
4 



22 ■ BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

health and spirit, and hence the resignation of his 
position in the Grammar School, and the trip to Europe. 
It was a year of busy recreation, and sight-seeing, and 
study, but through all that period the heavy cloud of 
sorrow hung over him, darkening his path, and hiding 
the benevolent face of his Heavenly Father. And 
though Christian faith prevailed at last, such was his 
disappointment that his prayer — and what he felt sure 
was believing prayer — had not been answered in the 
recovery of his children, that he reconstructed his 
theory of prayer, and for years held that our petitions 
for temporal blessings should be confined chiefly to 
those of a general nature, and as to specific temporal 
wants, though we might confide them to God, it was 
not well to urge them, or lay any stress upon them, as 
if in such things the prayer of faith could change the 
course of His providence. This is the theory of dis- 
appointment and submission, rather than of a childlike 
trust, which would run to our Heavenly Father with 
every request, little and large, and expect Him to grant 
it if He can. Still he was pondering and learning, 
and only a short time before his death he had a con- 
versation with a very intimate friend on this subject, 
and, I think, had his doubts cleared up, and was led 
back to views for which he was very grateful. The 
first sentence of his message to me, a day before I was 

permitted to enter the sick room, was, " Tell B 

that I believe in prayer." It would have sounded 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23 

Strange but for the evident allusion to a conversation 
which we had last summer upon prayer for specific 
temporal blessings. 

On the trip to Europe Samuel had the company of 
his wife and sister, and of other relatives and friends, 
making a party of eight at the outset, though he stayed 
beyond them all. They sailed from New York in the 
Great Eastern, Sept. 8, 1863, arrived at Liverpool the 
20th, and in Paris the 29th. Remaining in Paris 
through the months of October and November, they 
spent December in the south of France, including three 
weeks at Nice, and crossed the Alps to Turin and 
Genoa. Then it was two weeks at Naples, and two 
months at Rome, Florence three weeks, and so on, and 
May in Switzerland. He then proceeded to Liverpool, 
to send Mrs. Capron and his sister to the United States, 
and himself turned back to Germany for four months' 
study of the German. This time was spent chiefly in 
Halle. He took a German steamer for New York 
about the middle of October, and reached Hartford in 
November, in season to vote for Mr. Lincoln, for his 
second term. 

He was disappointed only on this trip by the loss of 
a visit to England, which had been postponed to the 
visit to the Continent, but it was made up by a most 
delightful visit to Great Britain and Ireland, with three 
of his pupils, in the summer vacation of 1871. 

I have already alluded to Samuel's disposition to 



24 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

retire from teaching on his return from the year in 
Europe. He was in vigorous health, and might hope 
to preserve his health better by a more active life. His 
neighbors and fellow-townsmen received him with great 
cordiality, and with certainly a greater manifestation of 
interest than awaited him in Hartford, and they were 
much disappointed at his decision to leave them again 
after those five months at home. 

The last nine years spent at the High School are 
those by which he will be best remembered in Hart- 
ford. But his experience as an instructor had been 
largely gained in those previous years in the Grammar 
School department, where his time was wholly devoted 
to teaching the classics. At that time, indeed, he had 
almost the whole work of classical instruction to do 
personally — from the paradigms to the final review — 
and he felt more secure of the preparation of his pupils 
for college than was possible with never so good assist- 
ants, but the divided resi3onsibility of subsequent 
years. 

And the change for him might have been a dan- 
gerous experiment, after ten years of confinement to the 
classics (and an Andover fitting) if it had not been that 
he had naturally an enthusiastic love for mathematics 
and the sciences. But he took up astronomy with 
greater ardor than Virgil, and though he had declined 
some urgent requests to edit volumes of the classics, 
the state of his health only kept him from volunteering 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 25 

the preparation of a text-book on astronomy. But, with 
his fideUty to the ordinary duties of school, he never 
could have endured the extra labor of publication. I 
suspect that the compilation of that little book of 
school lyrics was sufficiently laborious and vexatious to 
warn him off from the fields of authorship. There was, 
indeed, no other field of authorship that tempted him 
in the least, except that of school books. When men- 
tioning to Mrs. Capron that she might find in his desk 
papers which seemed to have been carefully prepared, 
he added that they were on no account for publication. 
" Writing," said he, " was never my forte." 

As his intimate friend, you have for years been 
familiar with his happy home life, and if you had not 
been, that letter about Nellie and Alice, though so full 
of sorrow, would disclose the fact, as it must have been, 
when children again appeared on the scene. Clara 
Day is now nine years old, Bertha Chapin six, and 
William Cargill four— all too young to appreciate 
their loss, though perhaps all will remember him. 

Although I spoke of Samuel as coming home from 
Europe in vigorous health, he was never what you 
would call rugged and strong. Both his foreign trips 
were of immense service to his health, and he had come 
almost to depend on a sea voyage, longer or shorter, in 
the summer vacation, to recruit him for the duties of a 
new school year. It now seems unfortunate that he failed 
of this in both of the last two summers. Still he ap- 



26 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

peared less prostrated last summer than usual, and none 
of us apprehended that he would not go through the 
winter with at least his usual health. 

It is too late now for regrets, or we might wish that 
he had favored himself somewhat when he found that 
he was going beyond his strength. For instance, he 
was quite unfitted for the exposure to the cold in star- 
gazing, with his class in astronomy. He hardl}^ re- 
flected that while the class came by sections and 
remained but a little while, he had two or three times 
as great exposure, because he stayed through. 

It was at such an exercise, one night about the ist of 
December, that he caught a cold which he never shook 
off. A common cold, indeed, with him was a pretty 
serious matter, especially in winter, and in term time, 
and after the anxiety and care of illness in his family. 
Ten or twelve days later, as he was struggling toward 
the end of the term, the teachers advised him to give 
up and lie by a few days, and he remained at home 
nearly the whole of the week preceding Christmas 
week, and thought that he had the better of his cold. 
On Monday of Christmas week he returned to school, 
having girded himself for the last two days of the term 
and the closing examination, and came home to the 
well-appreciated luxury of a vacation to be sick in. 
Thursday was Christmas. He enjoyed the festivities 
of the day with his family, and his next older brother 
and wife, barring only the severe cold. It seems now 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 2'] 

the fatal mistake that on Friday, a raw, chilly day, he 
started down town to pay some out-standing bills for 
the High School, in order to clear off the last obstacle 
to a free and easy vacation. He seems to have walked 
the whole way because he did not dare to expose him- 
self to the danger of taking more cold in the street car, 
and the result was, that when he returned, his feet, as 
he said, were like ice, and his lungs were on fire. That 
very night he felt that it was his last sickness. Mrs. 
Capron writes that " when that dreadful pain came on 
in his side, he said, ' Oh, E., this is a fatal stab. I 
never had anything before like this.' He continued 
very ill all night, though he had times of relief from 
severe pain." 

The next day, when, on the second visit of the doc- 
tor, the disease was pronounced pneumonia, he had 
already made arrangements for supplying his place in 
the school, and had sent Mr. Hall several messages 
about school matters. When he knew the doctor's 
decision, he said, " I have not strength to battle with 
pneumonia. I know I shall not live." 

It is easy now to see that his apprehensions were 
well founded, and that the disease which had seized 
him with such tremendous j^ower, scarcely loosened its 
hold upon him until he relinquished his hold on life. 
On Tuesday morning the doctor seemed to hope that 
the fever was broken, and again, at the end of a week 
from the attack, on F'riday evening, January 2, the 



28 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

doctor went home in evident hope that the disease had 
taken a favorable turn. But it was the dehision of but 
a very few hours, and Saturday morning assembled us 
by such startling news of a change for the worse, that 
the most of us lingered at his bedside, or in the vicinity 
of the sick room, till the end. It was the first time 
that I had seen him. I wish that you had had the 
same privilege ; and, now that we know the result, I 
cannot but wish that we could have had the same free- 
dom to speak of death that he had. 

You will not infer that his apprehension of a fatal 
termination of the disease was of the nature of fear. 
He was the calmest and least agitated of all in that 
sick room. Mrs. Capron writes that on Sunday after- 
noon he wanted to talk with her about dying, and when 
she could not conceal her agony at the thought, he 
said, " I know it will be terrible for you, terrible. How . 
gladly would I si3are you the sorrow if it were possible, 
but I think we had better talk about it now we are 
alone. We may not have another opportunity." And 
then, in words which are, doubtless, treasured up in 
precious memory, he alluded to their hapj^y life, and 
his sorrow at parting from her and the dear children, 
but assured her that death had no terrors for him — 
that all was peace and joy. " It is no more for me to 
die," he said, " than it would be now to rise from the 
bed and walk out the door of this room." He spoke to 
others of his prevailing peace. To me he said, speak- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 29 

ing very slowly, and with difficulty, " I want to say 
that my mind has been perfectly at rest. I am willing 
to leave it all with the Lord. When I think of the 

separation from E , it is dreadful, of course, but the 

Lord will take care of her." At the same time he said, 
" I have had doubts now and then, about this and that, 
but they are all gone now." Li no distrust of his peace 
of mind, but rather to draw him out, I said, " You don't 
put any confidence in a good life, or anything of that 
kind ? " " Not a bit of it," he replied, with manifest 
disgust. " But only in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of 
sinners ? " " That's it," he replied. He said at another 
time. " I want to hand down to my children the testi- 
mony of my strong personal faith in Jesus Christ." 

Mrs. Capron mentions of the earlier days of his 
illness, that " he loved to have some one pray with him 
often, and to hear passages of Scripture. He often 
repeated the 23d Psalm, and the hymn '' Rock of Ages." 
The two lines — 

"Nothing in my hand I bring, 
Simply to Thy cross I cling ; " 

he loved to repeat over and over again. 

He left affectionate messages for some of his friends 
— for you and others of the church ; for the teachers 
of the High School, "Tell them I always loved that 
old High School;" for Mr. Johnson (Chairman of the 
High School Committee), " Tell him that he has made 
everything very pleasant for me in my position." All 
5 



30 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

that week he spoke often of his dear children, and every 
night they came in for dear papa's good night kiss. 
Saturday night they came as usual, but this time it was 
not " good night," but '' good bye, my darlings, good 
bye ; be good children. I shall go Jionic Sunday." 

He had estimated very correctly the time of his 
decease, and in a very serious manner suggested that 
for the last half day of his life, when it was not possible 
to change the result, opiates and stimulants should be 
entirely omitted, in order to leave his mind clear, and 
not needlessly protract the scene. " But," said he, " I 
have told you what I should like, and you must do 
what you think best." Such attention was paid to his 
wish that his mind was unclouded to the end, or, rather, 
till consciousness ceased. 

The doctor came at about eight o'clock on Sunday 
morning, but Samuel did not observe him, and was fast 
■ passing into unconsciousness. Rubbing his chilly 
hands, so as to warm them before feeling the pulse of 
his patient, the doctor said in a clear voice, " Good 
morning, Mr. Capron." " Good morning," was the 
reply ; the last words of our dear one on earth, and a 
half hour later, (at twenty minutes before nine) he had 
opened his eyes to the brightness of a Sabbath morning 
in heaven. 

Very affectionately yours, 

W. B. CAPRON. 



SAMUEL M. CAPRON, 

THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 
BY 

MARGARET BLYTIIE. 



The attempt to transport a person whom we have 
known out of the reahii of hfe into that of Hterature, is 
always a difficult one. But perhaps one never feels so 
keenly the imperfection of the correspondence between 
words and the thoughts which they represent, as when 
he tries to convey to another the idea of some excep- 
tionally symmetrical and well-balanced character. He 
feels a difficulty like that of the portrait-painter who 
should essay to make a characteristic and spirited 
likeness of a faultlessly regular face. The picture 
would be better if the subject were less beautiful. 

No one can write of Mr. Capron without fearing that 
his words will read hke an ideal sketch of the perfect 
man. Of all the men whose lives were ever written, 
this is he whom his biographer would least desire to 



32 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

overpraise. Living, he loved the truth, and shunned 
applause ; the voice would be unfriendly that should 
affront his ashes with a eulogy misplaced. Yet words 
truly spoken of him, let them be guarded how they 
may, will seem to praise him out of reason. Nor can 
one action of his* life be named, — far less can the sum of 
his work be reckoned, — unless one should speak of that 
matchless character which his friends would gladly 
leave to be its own remembrancer ; for what he did 
was the result of what he was, and what he was, was 
still the measure of what he could do. It is not always 
so. Many a time the teacher, the poet, the preacher, 
is greater than the man : but he, who surpassed other 
men in so much, was above them not least in this, that 
he was more real in all his qualities than they. His 
teaching was himself. 

He was not a teacher of genius, if by genius is meant 
a development of one faculty at the expense of others. 
He was great as the head of a school through the same 
qualities that would have made him great anywhere 
else. If he had been in business, he would have under- 
stood that business so much better than anyone else 
that he would speedily have become necessary to it. If 
he had been the colonel of a regiment, he would have 
been deeply feared, passionately loved, and intrepidly 
followed by his men. If he had been a prime minister, 
he would have been the mild unconscious autocrat of 
his cabinet. 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 33 

Most eminent teachers have had one qiiahty in com- 
mon : a vivid enthusiasm, joined to a power of express- 
ing it which at times amounted to an inspiration. In 
Miss Lyon this characteristic was combined with an 
overpowering sense of spiritual things. In another 
woman, scarcely less distinguished, but, happily, still 
living, it is re-enforced by personal beauty, strong mag- 
netism, and a sympathy always warm and vital. In 
Arnold of Rugby it was united to an exceptional 
loftiness of mind. 

If this be a law, Mr. Capron was an exception to it. 
His enthusiasm was a deep, smouldering heat. He 
could communicate it through the subtle channels of 
conduct ; he could feed it by prompt, unselfish action : 
the one thing he could not do was to express it in 
words. His addresses to the school were admirable 
for precision, clearness, and temperance ; they were 
rarely instinct with fire. When he spoke on subjects 
of importance there was an almost comic disproportion 
between his unimpassioned words and the feeling they 
represented, that sometimes provoked a smile of loving 
amusement from those who knew him best. But this, 
which would have been a defect in any other man, 
became in him the source of a certain power. When 
people habitually allow for some peculiarity of mind or 
manner in others, it is in the nature of the case that 
they should often allow too much. Let it once be 
understood that a man never says as much as he 



34 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

means, and he will frequently be supposed to mean 
many things that he never thought of. Thus Mr. 
Capron's known reticence gave to his lightest word a 
weight of which he was not himself aware. His praise 
and blame sank into the mind, and were remembered 
for years. " Mr. Capron never praised me but once," 
says one to whom life has certainly not been unkind 
since then ; " I wrote some Greek on the board, and he 
said it was well done. That was more to me than all 
the little successes I have stumbled upon since." 

All his methods were marked by the simple and 
quiet habit of his mind. He never wasted words or 
provoked unfruitful discussion. A stranger to him and 
to the school was standing with him one day when a 
scholar came up to prefer a request. It was a young- 
man from one of the upper classes, who wished to be 
dismissed for that day at an earlier hour than usual. 
It was the sort of case in which custom demanded a 
note from the authorities at home, and no doubt the 
applicant knew that, but being of a sanguine turn, had 
probably hoped to carry his point by sheer audacity. 
He put his request with an air of much confidence, 
stating his case at some length and with great fluency. 
Mr. Capron — who had probably a hundred things to do 
at that moment, in different parts of the building — 
showed no impatience, and did not interrupt the orator 
by so much as a look ; only, when the tale was ended, 
he dropped out quietly, and as it were accidentally, the 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 35 

-words : " Yoii,must bring a note." The phrase was so 
brief, the tone so matter-of-course, that the spectator of 
this httle scene took them for entire assent, and never 
guessed that they meant refusal, till she caught the 
blank discomfiture in the petitioner's face. Not an- 
other word was spoken, and it did not seem to occur to 
either party that another was needed. Sometimes this 
peculiarity of manner made Mr. Capron a little formid- 
able to people who did not know him well. New 
scholars of a timid disposition, going up to him for 
the first time to relate their own misdeeds, would occa- 
sionally be thrown by it into a state of terror the more 
ludicrous as he was quite innocent of the effect he pro- 
duced, and kindly set their agitation down to remorse. 
If he would have blustered, or even argued, they would 
have known what he meant, but the calm, the silence, 
the attention, were ominous, and suggested thunder. 

Much of the impression of finality that attended Mr. 
Capron's decisions arose from that keen sense of jus- 
tice which in him amounted almost to genius. Expe- 
diency, of the shuffling and paltering sort, did not 
enter into the counsels of his mind. He applied a 
general principle to individual cases with a uniformity 
which made it seem like a law of nature. Thus his 
processes, into which no occult motive entered as an 
element, could always be verified by those who were 
interested in the result. 

This was simple integrity, nothing more ; and it was 



36 THE MAN AND THP: TEACHER. 

not with him a calculation, but the necessity of his 
nature ; but one must have seen something of the in- 
side working of schools, to know how much friction may 
be saved by mere honesty. Under Mr. Capron every 
scholar became, to a certain extent, his own judge : if 
his wishes were thwarted, he might be dissatisfied with 
the structure of the universe, and the general constitu- 
tion of things ; he rarely blamed his principal. 

Yet no man was less servile to routine. Exposed, 
especially at certain seasons, to ceaseless importunities 
from scholars and their friends, — comj^elled hourly to 
deny, to grieve, to disappoint, — wounded through his 
tenderness and his compassion, — he seized eagerly upon 
any reason which justified him in relaxing rule. So 
long as it appeared that a case, however great its hard- 
ship, could not in fairness be taken out of the general 
category, entreaty might distress, but could not move 
him ; once let it be shown to be in the smallest degree 
exceptional, and he was not only ready but anxious to 
show indulgence. Only those who possessed his inti- 
mate confidence knew how much he suffered from the 
necessity of inflicting pain that was often laid upon 
him. 

Once it chanced that one of his teachers was called 
into the room where he was holding a conference with 
the mother of a boy who had somehow come in danger 
of the council. Nobody knows, now, exactly what he 
had done, or was likely to suffer ; probably nothing worse 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 37 

was threatened than a month's suspension ; — and the 
mother had come to intercede. It was the old, sad his- 
tory ; she was a widow, she had nothing but this boy, 
she had made great sacrifices to keep him at school, 
and now he would lose a month, and probably his place 
in his class, and all would be for naught. She told 
her story with piteous tears and heartbreaking detail ; 
it was only a boy going to be suspended, but it was 
like the end of the world to her. Mr. Capron was very 
gentle, very patient, but quite inflexible. Pressed with 
other business as he was, he let her talk and cry, and 
begin her story over and over again, but he could not 
give her any hope. It would appear from the story 
that the conscience of the culprit had anticipated jus- 
tice, and that his offence had not yet been brought 
officially before Mr. Capron, for it is remembered that 
he said : " If the case is as you state it, I see no reason 
for making it an exception." Here the teacher, who 
had been set down at a corner of the table to get up 
the statistics of the matter, j^ointed out a slight techni- 
cal flaw in the case against the boy, which did not at 
all diminish his real fault, but of which Mr. Capron 
might take advantage to reprieve him, if he chose. 
He caught at the suggestion ; his set face bright- 
ened ; he straightened himself, pulled the papers to 
him across the table, ran over the statement with his 
miraculous speed and certainty. In two minutes it was 
all settled ; the mother was drying her eyes and going 
6 



38 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

out at the door, and Mr. Capron was shutting it behind 
her. When she was fairly gone, he turned round with 
a bright look of intelligence and sympathy that he had 
sometimes for his friends, and exclaimed, " Well ! that 
was a good thing, wasn't it ?'' ending with one of his 
rare cordial laughs, full of relief and happiness. It put 
him in spirits for the rest of the afternoon. It is a pity 
to be obliged to add that the delay jDroved of no use, 
and that in the fullness of time the unhappy young 
scapegrace was suspended all the same. 

Most people who greatly influence others have re- 
course in doing so to means more or less circuitous. 
Indirection is God's own way with us, we are told, and 
assuredly there is nothing ignoble in choosing to rule 
by those gentle and unforceful methods which often 
demand from those who use them so large a sacrifice of 
pride and temper. Yet even innocent contrivance 
looked like trickery when it was set. beside the straight- 
forwardness of Mr. Capron's habitual dealings. Both 
the strength and the weakness of his nature unfitted 
him to govern by any sort of circumlocution. His 
courage would have revolted at it, even if he could have 
found the diplomacy it required. But there was no 
disdain in his choice of a method, if that can be called a 
choice which was instinctive with him. He could only 
move in straight lines, but he would have been the first 
to acknowledge that the arc has as good reason for ex- 
isting as the chord. He would have said that he lacked 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 39 

tact for roundabout ways ; and it was true that his tact 
was mainly such as his kindness taught him. His way 
of gaining a point with you was usually to state the 
case in hand exactly as it was, to explain what he 
thought would be best for all concerned, and to take 
it for granted that you could have no other desire than 
to do the really best thing. If he thought the general 
good required some sacrifice on your part he said so, as 
simply as if selfishness had been a lost art. In weaker 
hands, this method might have failed ; it was curiously 
successful in his. If he sometimes lost a battle for 
want of strategy, his victories were doubly valuable, 
because they were victories of two. He did not stir 
you up to a glow of generosity, as some people might 
have done, but while he talked in his unexaggerated, 
prosaic way, you forgot yourself if you were ever so 
selfish, and suddenly it seemed the only natural, the 
only possible, thing to forego your own wish for the 
common benefit. It was the sheer, downright weight 
of character and example. His life was so consistent 
that it formed an unbroken chain, and the whole force 
of it was felt at every point. 

But though he expected the public interest to be par- 
amount with everybody, it would be a mistake to sup- 
pose that he habitually sacrificed the scholars to the 
school, or that his interest in them was merely profes- 
sional. Every*pupil is so much the most important 
object in the world to himself, that it is not easy to 



40 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

astonish him by the interest you take in him. The best 
proof of Mr. Capron's minute and personal care for his 
scholars is the fact that it did astonish some of them. 
Of ten who should be asked what most struck them in 
him, five would probably reply : " The time he was wil- 
ling to devote to my personal affairs, and the memory 
he had for them, both while I was in school and after I 
had left it." 

Those who most valued Mr. Capron wondered some- 
times what it was in him that inspired his scholars with 
so deep a respect for his abilities. It was not scholar- 
ship, for the great mass of them never met him in the 
class-room. His addresses to the school were remark- 
able only for directness and simplicity. It could not 
all be an impression filtering down through the senior 
class, always a small and exclusive body. Yet the least 
and last urchin of the fourth class would speak of him 
with awe as " a smart man." So far as this estimate is 
to be ascribed to any one quality in him, it was, doubt- 
less, due to his extraordinary executive faculty. In all 
the daily exigencies of the school, the thousand-and-one 
questions, involving a host of conflicting interests and 
remote considerations, all endlessly complicated with 
each other, which come up for the principal's decision, 
he was never at fault, never flurried, never uncertain. 
Perhaps it was not alone by reason of the singular 
lucidity of his mind, but partly also because he had 
never tampered with his convictions, that his judgment 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 4I 

in all such matters was so sure and rapid. Through 
the mass of side issues and accidental circumstances 
that enveloped it, he pierced at once and with certainty 
to the real differentia of a case. His practical wisdom 
was like an inspiration. " I don't agree with Mr. 
Capron on this point," said a teacher, himself mighty 
in counsel, " but I hope he will settle the matter in 
accordance with his own judgment, for experience has 
taught me that when I differ from him I am sure to be 
in the wrong." The view of a subject which dawned 
upon others after long reflection was very likely to be 
the first that occurred to Mr. Capron. His wonderful 
rightness of mind showed him things in their true 
aspects from the first ; and then all his intellectual 
processes were exceptionally accurate and quick. His 
mind was of an eminently serviceable order. All its 
powers lay ready under his hand. The multiplicity of 
cares could not confuse, fatigue could not cloud that 
tranquil intelligence. He did everything as if he had 
nothing else to do. A hundred threads ran through 
his hand, and none were ever tangled or broken. The 
care of his own classes was the simplest of his tasks. 
In conducting a recitation as it is done in the High 
School, a teacher is obliged to carry on simultaneously 
a number of distinct trains of thought. Having put a 
question, he must attend to the answer, assign to it a 
mathematical value out of ten or twenty possible 
marks, correct errors, frame the next question, select 



42 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

the next scholar, all at once, keeping meanwhile a 
general grasp of the subject, and a general hold of the 
class, and a general eye to the lapse of time, besides 
minor matters. When to this was added the care of a 
session-room, most teachers found it enough, and were 
apt to be blind and deaf to external things. Mr. Capron 
appeared to give an undivided attention to his recita- 
tions ; he was never absent, never careless ; yet the 
more general concerns of the school never suffered, and 
he had senses all over the building. 

He could not always understand why other people 
could not do what seemed to him so simple. There 
was a faucet in the building, which, being adroitly set, 
used to produce a lugubrious wheezing, snoring, and 
groaning, unlike the agonies of any other water pipe 
ever known. It was not a very exquisite joke to waken 
this music, but it was one perennially fresh to the 
schoolboy mind. Age could not wither it, nor custom 
stale its infinite variety. I speak, of course, not of the 
school in general — most would have disdained so in- 
fantile a trick — but of that residuum of idleness and 
stupidity which always exists in such a body. When- 
ever this was done, Mr. Capron used to have it stopped, 
and so it happened that, though the teachers had all 
heard the sound, their attention had never been called 
to it. But one day when Mr. Capron had been away 
attending some committee meeting or other, he came 
in and found that it had been iroing on, heaven knows 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 43 

how long. Nobody had thought of doing anything 
about it ; indeed, I am certain some of the teachers 
supposed it to be a legitimate noise, as inevitable as the 
steam-whistle. There was a class reciting in the first 
session-room Mr. Capron came to ; the presiding officer 
was fathoms deep in her subject, and started when he 
spoke at her elbow. " What wonderful people you all 
are ! " he exclaimed, not impatiently, but with a sort of 
amazement ; " think of your all sitting and listening to 
that, and never thinking of stopping it ! " He said no 
more, and doubtless the circumstance, being but a 
transient ripple upon a general surface of unruffled 
order, soon passed from his mind. ]^ut it is a mark of 
the difference between him and other men, that the 
memory of his annoyance and of her own neglect 
lingers painfully to this day on the mind of the person 
he addressed.' It was very unusual indeed for him to 
say so much in the way of blame ; the school was so 
perfectly organized, and those who taught in it desired 
so earnestly to do their duty, that it was difficult for 
anything to go very far wrong ; so that partly it was the 
rarity of the event that made it memorable ; but more 
it was that in all who had to do with Mr. Capron there 
woke an implacable conscience that ditl not know how 
to forgive a lapse in fidelity. 

Mr. Capron was far above petty espionage, and 
indeed the tone of the school was so high that there 
was little need of police service ; but when any disorder 



44 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

did occur, he was wonderfully quick in divining its 
precise nature, and in singling out the guilty persons. 
He was so rarely at fault, that when he was so he did 
not quite know how to take it. One day, during the 
noon intermission, a kitten strayed or was smuggled 
into the building, and some member of the senior class 
thought it would be an admirable witticism to shut it 
into the desk of a fellow-student. He expected, of 
course, that it would soon be discovered and expelled, 
and never meant the joke to trench upon study hours ; 
but as ill-luck would have it, the owner of the desk did 
not arrive until the session had begun, when, finding 
himself embarrassed by this unusual piece of furniture, 
and not knowing what else to do with it, he somehow 
contrived to convey the hapless little beast into the 
bookcase, where a door ajar concealed it from the 
principal, while revealing it to everybody else. Any 
creature but a cat would have jumped down and run 
away, but this perverse animal made itself quite at 
home on the narrow shelf, blinking comfortably at the 
world between its naps, and occasionally taking a 
stately walk, with a majestic sweep of its tail at the 
turn. This sight was naturally too much for the class. 
Attention flagged ; covert smiles jDassed about. The 
principal scented mischief ; he glanced about, gave a 
failure or two for slight offences, merely on general 
principles, and by way of lowering the barometer a 
little, but he could not make it out. Seeing that he 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 45 

was somewhat annoyed, the class, who were devoted to 
him, came up after school and told him all about it. He 
smiled propitious and remitted the failures, and the 
same evening told the story, with some glee and some 
contrition, for having, as he said, lost patience. The 
incident was such as might have happened any day in 
any school ; the only remarkable thing about it is that 
it was so long and so vividly remembered, both as a 
solitary and astounding break in the awful decorum of 
the senior class-room, and also because it was so unusual 
for Mr. Capron to be in any degree perplexed or 
baffled. 

He was not only very shrewd in detecting a trick, 
but very ingenious in good naturedly turning the tables 
upon its authors. As the scholars would themselves 
have expressed it, it was not easy to " get ahead of 
him," This wisdom of the serpent in one so gentle 
and sedate, and otherwise harmless as a dove, affected 
people proiie to laughter with a comic sense of surprise. 
In the senior room of the old building on Asylum 
street there used to be a parlor croquet table, or a cue 
alley, or something of that sort. This game was much 
affected at one time by the juniors of that year ; it was 
a passion, a furor ; at every recess the balls would 
begin to roll almost before the bell had done sounding. 
As there was a chronic feud between the senior and 
junior classes, of course the seniors scorned this amuse- 
ment on principle, and cherished as their particular 
7 



4-6 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

fetish a pair of boxing gloves, armed with which their 
athletes were wont to spar. It happened that Mr. 
Capron had a recitation in Greek, which for want of 
time he used often to prolong into the morning recess, 
and as the class complained that they could not hear 
his explanations for the clicking of the mallets, he 
requested the juniors not to begin playing until this 
recitation should be over. Through some misunder- 
standing, however, the juniors, who were the best 
disposed class in the world, did not attend to this 
injunction, and the annoyance went on, unobserved by 
Mr. Capron, who was not very sensitive to small inter- 
ruptions. Those dignitaries, the classical seniors, not 
unnaturally conceived this to be an affront to Mr. 
Capron, and more especially to the dignity of the 
senior class ; so by way of vindicating lawful authority, 
in some secret hour they privately sequestered the 
balls. I think they were carried about in somebody's 
pocket for a week or two, both for safety and also for 
greater commodity in producing them, should they be 
peremptorily demanded by the authorities. At first 
the juniors bore their wrongs in silence, but when a 
reasonable time had elapsed 'without bringing back the 
balls they grew impatient, and finally some one com- 
plained to the principal. It was just one of those cases 
where it is undignified and unwise to do anything, and 
almost impossible to do nothing. Mr. Capron did not 
promise to interfere, and made very little answer of 



THE MAN AND. THE TEACHER. 47 

any kind to the complaint ; but in the course of a clay 
or two the boxing gloves in their turn unaccountably 
disappeared. Of course the juniors were instantly 
accused of having hidden them ; it did not occur to 
any one to suspect Mr. Capron, until, being casually 
asked one day if he had seen the gloves, he gravely 
replied that " he could not say, but he thought they 
would probably come back when the balls did." This 
solution, which had all the simplicity of genius, so 
tickled both parties that if it did not heal the feud, it 
at least soothed it for a season with a wholesome balm 
of laughter. In justice to the seniors it must be said 
that their manly hearts disdained to be worsted by 
these tactics, and that they kept the balls a few days 
longer on principle. 

Ah, how pleasant the old memories are! and how 
thick they crowd on each other ! He who was the 
soul of it all seems alive again while we remember how 
he looked and moved among us, and what words he 
said. But none of these things reveal him. We waste 
ourselves in words upon what was but external ; we do 
not reach the heart of his mystery. Because he was 
strong, skillful, wise, he could create a school; how 
was it that he fashioned men and women ? How was 
it that, coming within his circle, the untrained stupid 
natural creature became a living soul ? What can we 
say, but that Virtue regenerates those who look upon 
her ? " It was not anything he did that impressed us," 



48 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

says one of his scholars, " he just was in the room and 
hvecl with us." He never said that law is divine, and 
that work is healing, but he was himself an embodied 
order, a living diligence. He did not say that he found 
life serious and levity unworthy, but somehow to those 
who lived with him it seemed deeply important to do 
right. 

Still less was it his habit to speak of the religious 
faith that lay deep and untroubled in the silent places 
of his heart. With all his science, his reading, his 
knowledge of the world and the world's thoughts, he 
held it simply, like a child. Unbelief did not exist for 
him, not even as an adversary ; it provoked him to no 
heat, it found in him no sympathy ; he passed it by. 
He knew neither the doubt that sneers nor the doubt 
that weeps and prays. He did not tell these things, 
but we knew them ; and while we looked on him, we 
too believed. His spirit was reflected in a hundred 
ways, transmitted through a hundred minds, and that 
was the school. 

Thus his direct influence upon his scholars was, after 
all, but a fraction of his aggregate power. He multi- 
plied himself through his teachers ; if he had been less 
to them, he could not have been so much to the school. 
So deep was his impress ujDon their own minds, and so 
durable his moulding force upon the conditions under 
which they worked, that those who served under him 
cannot even now separate that part of their success 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 49 

which is fairly their own from that part which had its 
source in him. One of them used sometimes to stand 
where he could look over a railing and watch a' great 
slow shaft that turned a thousand flying wheels. As he 
leaned and looked, he always thought of Mr. Capron. 
" The small wheels buzz and hurry ; they seem full of 
business ; and so they are, and in their place useful and 
necessary, like us ; but the force is not in them." In 
the love and loyalty of his heart, he pleased himself 
with thinking so, not knowing, ah me! how near was 
the end of all. When the shock came, and the ma- 
chinery all stood still, in our first consternation we could 
have wished that the world had ended with that throe ; 
we thought we could not bear the familiar places, 
another in the master's seat, and the work from which 
the joy was gone. But life cannot end when we would 
have it ; with many a painful jar we fit ourselves to the 
new conditions, and falteringly go on. 

It has been said that Mr. Capron was not a great 
teacher by virtue of any special talent for teaching, but 
rather through abilities which would have enabled him 
to do many other things as well. So also, he was not 
a great leader through any mere knack at command. 
Some people are created by Heaven to govern us. 
Against reason and probability, and without visible 
effort, they subjugate people who may have a hundred 
times their wit and goodness. Perhaps this power is 
legitimate enough after its sort ; and doubtless in some 



50 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

inscrutable way it is for the good of mankind that it 
should be so often conferred on those in whom it can 
only serve more conspicuously to illustrate human folly ; 
but however that may be, Mr. Capron's mastery was not 
of that kind. His successes were all genuine. We 
believed in him because in his province he was the ablest 
man we knew ; we deferred to him because he was wiser 
than us all ; we loved him for a goodness that was above 
this world. However accomplished a teacher might be 
in his own domain, he was very likely some time to dis- 
cover that Mr. Capron was more at home there than 
himself; or if in some cases he lacked special knowledge, 
his easy grasp of a subject showed how readily he could 
excel in it, if there were need to try. Did he know 
how easily he was above us all ? I think he never took 
time to find it out ; it is certain that his advantage was 
less dear to him than for his sake it was to those over 
whom he won it. By him alone of all men it was 
pleasant to every one to be surpassed; and not the 
meanest or the vainest of mankind could have grudged 
him the victory which cost hjm so little, and of which 
he took so little heed. 

This breadth of scholarship enabled him to give help 
and sympathy ; it never tempted him to domineer and 
annoy. The air is not so- free as he left his assistants 
in that which was their province. Thus unfettered, 
they were doubly bound ; faith and honor were engaged 
that they would do their best. Not that he would have 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 5 1 

hesitated to interfere, if it had been necessary. He 
knew perfectly what belonged to his office: he wore his 
authority lightly, with a careless strength ; never ignobly 
or weakly. But he had no need to speak. So high was 
his own standard, so exquisite the finish of everything 
he did, that he was himself a perpetual admonition. 
His visits of inspection — when once you knew him — 
were all pure happiness. One never taught so well, 
with such ease and pleasant excitement, as when he sat 
by, a visible but a kinder conscience. Only sloth or 
incapacity could have been much afraid of that cordial 
neighborhood. 

Mr. Capron may be said to have discovered the min- 
imum of resistance which it is possible to excite in 
governing. With him, the natural difficulty of obedience 
was not complicated by any feeling of personal opposi- 
tion. If this was true in regard to his scholars, it was 
doubly true of his teachers. However the principal of 
a school may possess the confidence of his subordinates, 
it would seem to be in the nature of things that there 
should be sometimes a conflict of opinions, a deliberate 
sacrifice of private conviction to authority. Mr. Capron, 
however, was an example to the contrary. In yielding 
to him there was no conscious submission: his way 
recommended itself as the best ; his opinion had only 
to be stated in order to be shared. The deference 
which he commanded in meetings of the faculty might 
have been called servile, if it had not been so affection- 



52 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

ate. He always invited free discussion, claimed but 
one vote, and yielded without contest when the day 
went against him ; but his doing so was an occasion of 
consternation to the rest, so apt was it to be followed 
by disaster. An almost unanimous vote would some- 
times be reconsidered and reversed in consequence of a 
decided opinion from him. But if his judgment had 
been more fallible than it was, his ascendant would 
hardly have been less. He bore rule sojsimply, so 
nobly, with such absence of self-will and self-assertion, 
that his wishes must always have been a law ; and if he 
had lacked resources of his own, all that others pos- 
sessed would have been wilhngly his. 

His greatness of spirit was contagious. Where he 
was, harmony was a habit ; magnanimity became a fash- 
ion. Among so many teachers, succeeding each other 
through so many years, not all could have been by 
nature noble ; but most found grace to become or to 
appear so. In his generous presence, small jealousies, 
little rancors, could not live. "We have no family 
quarrels," said one of those teachers, long ago, with a 
gentle pride that belonged to her. The mere suspicion 
of such a thing roused Mr. Capron to a rare passion of 
incredulous indignation. " I never saw him really angry 
but once," says another teacher, "and that was with 
me. He thought I had been stirring up some petty 
dissension — about the division of work it was ; and he 
was quite right to think so, although it was not true. 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 53 

He fell upon me like the angel Michael — if I had not 
been innocent, I don't know what must have become of 
me. He begged my pardon within the half hour ; he 
was very angry with himself ; but for my part, I liked 
him the better for his wrath." 

Mr. Capron's utterly impersonal way of treating 
matters of discipline, joined to the dryness of his man- 
ner, used sometimes to give the impression of coldness. 
*'A machine for dispensing justice — that is what he 
seemed to me," said a scholar once. This impression 
rarely survived anything like a close acquaintance, and 
of late even comparative strangers ceased almost to 
feel it. He changed and mellowed very much in the 
last few years, as he was more and more appreciated ; 
or rather he did not change, but that which represented 
him to us came to express him more truly. But he 
never learned to carry his heart upon his lips. He 
was always a man whom it was necessary somewhat to 
divine. Could he even have stooped to the art of pop- 
ularity, it would have been a more difficult one for him 
than for another man. The doubtful quality called 
magnetism was not his. His manner afflicted many 
people with a sort of constraint. "I always think Mr. 
Capron is disapproving of me," said one. Yet there 
was a charm in his presence. It was not only the help 
he gave — it was not only that tangles were straightened 
and rough things grew smooth and hard things easy 
when he appeared. In himself he was a rest. There 



54 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

was comfort in the very set of his shoulders, as he walked 
about the building. With him was no doubt, no uneasy 
distrust. His words might come short of his thought, 
but they never distorted it; the mind was not kept on 
the stretch to allow for small insincerities ; you relied 
with certainty on his strength and kindness; if you 
were his friend, you also reposed in his fidelity. His 
goodness shone. His reserve, his silence, his occasional 
coldness and abruptness, could not veil its serene ray. 
Young and simple creatures, whose self-love was not 
hurt by his want of effusion, were especially susceptible 
to his attraction. Some one who cared enough for him 
to remember the little story, once happened to be with 
him at the house of a friend of both. This lady had 
two children, beautiful and intelligent boys, about three 
and four years old, who had never seen Mr. Capron. 
While the talk was going on, these little creatures stole 
into the room, and leaning up against their mother's 
lap, began to inspect the stranger, at first with shy 
and fugitive glances, soon with rapt forgetful interest. 
After awhile they gradually edged across the carpet 
to the sofa where he sat, and the younger and bolder 
laid a hand light as a leaf experimentally upon his knee. 
As he took no notice of this whatever, they next 
consulted each other by a look, and out of his intent- 
ness and gravity the elder broke into a sudden chuckle 
of ecstasy, instantly smothered by his good-breeding; 
for, tiny as they were, they were models of childish 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 55 

deportment. This was the end of their hesitations. 
They were presently on the sofa beside him, chmbing 
over his knees and his shoulders, twining under his 
arms, and rubbing their little soft faces against his 
cheeks, all without a sound ; while he calmly continued 
his conversation, his natural dignity quite unimpaired 
by these antics. The perfect contentment with this 
state of things which was evident on both sides, in 
spite of Mr. Capron's apparent unresponsiveness, was a 
comfortable and tranquilizing sight. 

It was inevitable that such a man should be over- 
worked. He never spared himself where the school 
was concerned, and in the end he sacrificed his life to 
it. His views of the duties of a principal were pecu- 
liar. If he was above all, it was, he thought, that he 
might to better purpose be the servant of all. If power 
was in his hands, it was that out of the common work 
he might gather to himself all that was heavy, hard, or 
disagreeable. Nobility obliged him. His unselfish- 
ness, indeed, was beyond reason. He needed a keeper; 
some affectionate and willful hand to take possession 
of work that never should have been his. He did a 
great deal of drudgery that others could have done as 
well, and from which his higher duties might fairly have 
exempted him. But he was so made that he did not 
know how to demand a labor that he did not share ; 
and his determination was so strong and so quiet that 
it was not so easy to interfere as in our remorseful 



56 THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 

thoughts we fancy now it might have been. Many a 
time we vowed to lean upon him less, not to consult 
him, to bear our burdens without his help ; but habit 
and necessity were stronger than that resolve. He was 
a man on whom it was natural to rely. It was impos- 
sible to live with him and not to become dependent 
on him*. So invincible was the habit of reliance upon 
him, so instinctive the certainty that all would go right 
in which he was concerned, that when he died, the con- 
fused anguish and amazement of loss was mingled in 
some minds with an obscure pang of surprise that 
almost resembled a reproach. " He never failed us 
before," it would have said, if it could ever have come 
so far as speech. Without words, he invited confidence. 
There was about him an air of safety and inviolable 
discretion. That he should betray a trust or reveal a 
secret, was an incongruous, an impossible idea. How 
did he reconcile his secrecy with that transparent 
veracity which made his mind like clear glass to those 
who talked with him } That is a question for the 
casuists who are disquieted about the practicability of 
truth. Something, no doubt, he owed to his native 
dignity of manner, which must have made it difficult 
to ask him an impertinent question ; but more to courage 
and simplicity. What is certain is that he always 
knew a great many things which numbers of people 
were interested in knowing also ; he never prevaricated, 
and he never told what he did not wish to tell. 



THE MAN AND THE TEACHER. 5/ 

To all who lived and labored with him, Mr. Capron 
was a power, a succor, and an inspiration. There were 
those to whom he was something more. No one can 
fully understand his relations with his teachers who 
does not know what he became to some of them, when 
out of long companionship and unbroken faith a cloud- 
less friendship dawned, and in its sunshine the secret 
sweetness of his nature unfolded leaf by leaf. But 
that story must be left unwritten. '* We knew him," 
says one, perhaps more near to him than any, "but we 
shall never make strangers understand why we honored 
him and loved him so." Even to tell what that little 
knot of friends was to him were hard — how they obeyed 
him, served him, set him above all men ; to tell what he 
was to them would be impossible. The free heart, that 
gave, and never weighed its gift ; the unforced magna- 
nimity ; the strength, at need less his than theirs ; the 
constancy that was like a rock ; the deep and dear 
lovingness 

These are words ; too vain and vague to express the 
power and meaning of his life. If from his upper 
sphere one born of a nobler race came down and clasped 
us, held us a little while in converse, and departed, 
could we more describe him than to say of his face 
that it was fair, and of his voice that it was lovely ? 
Only the speech of the immortals can rightly syllable 
immortal beauty. That in our friend which was but 
common and earthly, we may reveal; his diviner part 
eludes our praise. 



SCHOLARSHIP AND CHARACTER. 

BY 

THOMAS A. THACHER, 

Professor in Yale College. 



New Haven, April 22, 1874. 
My dear Sir : 

As you requested, I send you in brief my impres- 
sions of the character and influence of Mr. Capron as 
a teacher. 

I began to know him when he entered this college as 
a Freshman, in the year 1849, ^'^'^^ ^^^ characteristics 
which were observable in him while he was a student 
here, remained with him ever after. He performed 
with a steady, quiet, intelligent faithfulness the tasks 
which were assigned him, never appearing to be anxious 
to attract attention, but evidently desirous of making 
his years of study truly profitable to himself. He did 
not confine himself as a scholar to the course prescribed 
by the institution, but took a broader and manlier view 



SCHOLARSHIP AND CHARACTER. 59 

of his proper work than is usual at that time of hfe. 
He did not drudge, but he did labor, honestly and earn- 
estly, to make solid acquisitions, and, thus laboring, he 
made his college life a constant growth, a growth not 
only in knowledge, but, what is far better, in mental 
strength and refinement. During these four years, 
wdsely and faithfully spent, the boy became a culti- 
vated man. 

When he went forth from the pupilage of a college 
to self-government, it was no great transition for him, 
for he had, all the time, been self-governed, and his 
character had been steadily maturing. College laws 
did not interfere with his feeling of independence, any 
more than did the laws of the State afterwards. The 
careful performance of duty in the circumstances in 
which he had voluntarily placed himself made him 
grow steadily stronger in character. This growth was 
attended with no noisy demonstration. It was as 
still as the growth {ocailto aevo) of a tree ; but, as in 
the growing tree, so in him every part was vital. If he 
was not enthusiastic or excitable to the world around 
him, there could be easily awakened within him a gentle 
covert enthusiasm, which those who knew him well, 
caught sight of and still remember. His soul was 
capable of great gladness. He was not morose, or 
censorious, or bitter. A tear might be ready to moisten 
his eye, but he had no venom for his tongue. 

His gentleness, however, did not spring from weak- 



6o SCHOLARSHIP AND CHARACTER. 

ness, but from strength rather. He had no compro- 
mises in his soul. He could have gone to the stake, 
without outcry, for a principle himself; and if he could, 
without remonstrance, see others sacrifice principle 
rather than suffer, it was not because he did not realize 
the greatness of their mistake and their sin. He was 
capable of indignation ; but sorrow or the thought of 
the Great Example could muffle his expression of it, 
unless it was made plain that he could do good by 
declaring himself. He was just and true. He was 
"steadfast and immovable," but without being obstinate, 
his air and manner never challenging opposition : on 
the contrary, one was more likely to be surprised to 
find the man who appeared so amiable, so well poised 
and strong in his intelligent convictions. 

But I need not further enumerate his good qualities. 
They were growing qualities, which were developed 
with growing strength and beauty after he went for- 
ward from the position of a learner in college to that 
of a teacher in a school, and even to the end of his 
useful life. As we contemplate the twenty years which 
he spent as a teacher, what do we find to have been the 
secret of his success.'^ That he had success no one 
doubts. When the sad news of his death spread over 
the city where he dwelt, how many there were, who 
responded, in their thoughts at least, that there was not 
another man among the 40,000 inhabitants there, who 
might not better have been spared ! The lamentation 



SCHOLARSHIP AND CHARACTER. 6 1 

over him was not confined to those who were or 
had been his pupils, nor to any circle of friends or 
acquaintances, nor to any parish or denomination, nor 
to any political association. This quiet, undemonstrative 
teacher of a single school in a large city had, almost 
unconsciously, come to be treasured in the hearts of 
the whole community as a jewel of great worth, and 
when he was taken away, the sense of personal loss was 
almost universal. No magistrate, no clergyman, no 
professional man, no private citizen, whatever his virtues 
or good deeds, could have caused so deep and univer- 
sal grief and regret by his death, as did Mr. Capron. 
Certainly then his life of twenty years was a success. 

If now we ask, what was the cause of this success as 
a teacher, our answer must be, that it was in the man, 
in what he was, in his qualities and characteristics. It 
was the outworking of the man within into the sweet 
and consistent and busy activities of his life, that made 
him the great and growing blessing that he was to the 
community. The good man, out of the good treasure 
of his heart, brought forth good things. That substra- 
tum of a strong and, at the same time, a lovely charac- 
ter, was the essential thing. Without that, his outward 
life could not have been what it was, or, even if it could 
have been, it would have wanted that intangible life- 
giving power, which has a deeper spring than is visible 
to the eye. Let no man think that he can have Mr. 
Capron's success by imitating Mr. Capron's methods, 
9 



62 SCHOLARSHIP AND CHARACTER. 

however minutely and constantly. He must begin 
deeper. He must study the qualities and harmonies of 
his character, and when he has caught his spirit, he may 
begin to hope for his success. It is, however, far 
easier to imitate actions than character, — far easier to 
do than to be. 

But although the qualities of his character were the 
first requisites to his success, he would, of course, have 
accomplished far less if he had had inferior mental 
endowments. The possessor of two talents cannot, 
however earnest his purposes, accomplish as much 
as he could do with five talents. Mr. Capron had a 
good mind, and it was well constituted. He had good 
judgment. This appeared not only in the guidance of 
his own studies and the studies of others, but in the 
management of the affairs of the school, and of life in 
general. Whatever he had to do, he had the habit of 
doing judiciously. He was quick to discover what was 
worth while, and what was idle and useless, and thus 
escaped the waste and annoyance to himself and to 
others, which come from the hesitation of a feeble 
judgment. He was a thorough scholar, and he made 
his pupils feel that no other scholarship was worthy of 
the name, nor of any great value. They found that he 
expected of them good, honest work, the faithful use of 
their time, and, as his approbation was worth some- 
thing, they were constantly influenced to do what he 
expected. But there was something more valuable 
cultivated in them than a desire to please him. There 



SCHOLARSHIP AND CHARACTER. 63 

was something in the whole man, in his sound mind, 
in his thorough scholarship, in his just treatment of 
them, in his guileless trueness, in his faithful devoted- 
ness to all their interests and to all the demands of 
duty, and, with all, in his quiet evenness of temper, 
which acted as a constantly transforming influence 
upon the great body of his pupils. Not all, of course, 
yielded to this influence. But it has certainly been a 
most precious thing for hundreds, perhaps thousands of 
youth to have been brought into the daily observation 
of such a life. The results of his labors as a teacher 
simply were tangible and striking. For years the 
pupils of his school took rank with the foremost as 
candidates for admission to the more advanced institu- 
tions. Of those who passed directly from the completed 
course of education in the High School to the various 
occupations of life, I am not able to speak so confidently ; 
but I have no doubt that they derived equal advantages 
from Mr. Capron's services and administration. 

One lesson from Mr. Capron's life as a teacher is so 
obvious that it hardly needs mention. But he presents 
one of the best illustrations I have ever met with, of 
the truth, that a successful teacher must be a man, as 
well as a scholar. 

If it is the first rule of the orator, to bring into sym- 
pathy with himself those whom he has to deal with, 
much more should it be the rule of the teacher. It is 
not enough to show fullness of knowledge, quickness 



64 SCHOLARSHIP AND CHARACTER. 

to discover and correct mistakes, readiness to give the 
full quota of instruction, although these things are 
indispensable. Some sign of sympathy with success, 
some sign of sympathy with earnest and honest en- 
deavor, even if the endeavor end in failure, some sign 
of the presence of a human soul, must betray itself 
in the eye, or the tone, or in some demeanor, if not in 
the words, of the teacher, or he will fail of the best 
success. There is great power in personal respect 
and esteem for a man of worth, to stimulate to activity 
the mind of a youthful student and keep it from the 
weariness which comes from long continued effort. 
There is no grade of scholarship which does not feel 
the touch of this power. The foremost are spurred 
by it to an intenser struggle : the hindmost, unless 
they are willingly the hindmost, gain confidence from 
it to put forth their best efforts against failure. And, 
what is better, it reaches beyond scholarship to the 
character, and thus tends to fashion and give strength 
to the entire being. Who that was ever under the 
instruction of Mr. Capron, does not still feel the 
influence of his personal character upon himself ? He 
was eminent for his nice scholarship, but as a man he 
was more. In his combination of the rare scholar 
and the rare man he became a model teacher. He has 
been cut down in his prime in the midst of his fruit- 
ful labors, and we grieve over no ordinary loss. 

More than two hundred years ago there was set up 



SCHOLARSHIP AND CHARACTER. 6$ 

in the ancient burying ground of Hartford, where it 
may still be read, a memorial of the colony's first 
'teacher,' for so the associate of Thomas Hooker was 
then called. . There is many a one who would hardly 
deem it extravagant, to repeat over Mr. C apron's new 
grave the closing line of that quaint old epitaph : 

"Hartford ! Thy richest jewel 's here interred." 



OBITUARY NOTICES BY THE PRESS. 



fFrorii the Hartford Courant, Jan. 5th, 1874.] 
THE DEATH OF MR. CAPRON. 

Whatever may be the private bereavement in the 
death of Mr. Samuel M. Capron, the loss of the public 
is greater ; and it is felt by the city of Hartford as a 
calamity. We desire to speak within bounds when we 
say that it seems as if the city could better spare almost 
any one else. We say this in our blindness, for we 
little know who is needed here or yonder, or by what 
means and instruments God's work is best carried on. 
But Mr. Capron's office is among the most difficult in 
the world to fill, and he filled it perfectly, it is hardly 
too much to say perfectly. 

Mr. Capron, as the principal of our High and Gram- 
mar school, was the center of our educational affairs. 
Upon him now for some years has largely depended 
the educational impress which our youth have received. 
He had in his hands to a great degree the training of 
boys and girls in the higher education ; he had the 
shaping of the interests which are of most vital conse- 
quence to our city and to its families. How profound 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 67 

this influence was, those know who have had direct 
connection with the management of the school, or who 
have had children educated in it. Mr. Capron was in 
a position to influence more strongly the intellectual 
and moral condition of the city than almost any other 
man ; and he was using that position most beneficently. 
There is no higher or more important office than that 
of Teacher, and Mr. Capron was born to that office ; 
and not only was he born to it, but he had trained him- 
self to its highest uses, and he was constantly growing 
in power and influence in it. It seems all the harder 
to lose him, because he was a growing man. And his 
work, to our eyes, was not done ; he was just entering 
upon it, like a strong man, with a great field before him, 
equipped for great achievements. 

The" qualities that met in Mr. Capron to fit him for 
his important place were many. He was a fine and 
accurate scholar — a thorough scholar, never satisfied 
for himself or for others with half-acquisitions. And 
he had preeminently a natural gift of imparting his 
learning and of inspiring enthusiasm in study. This 
was one of his chief characteristics. The school under 
his charge has constantly grown in the quality of its 
general instruction ; and boys who have gone from it 
to college have been distinguished in the solidity and 
brifliancy of their preparation above the candidates 
of most of the preparatory schools in the Union. The 
Hartford High and Grammar school has a most enviable 
distinction. 



6S OBITUARY NOTICES. 

Mr. Capron was not only a scholar, but he was an 
organizer. The first impression of him was that he 
lacked that nervous energy needed at the head of a 
crreat establishment. But he had in a remarkable 
degree the power of administration, of bringing things 
to pass. And the most remarkable thing about it was 
that he did it in the quietest manner. There was no 
assumption about him, no parade, not a particle of 
ostentation. We have never seen another person who 
did his work so unobtrusively. He was exceedingly 
modest, but he had not the false timidity of inefficiency. 
If he has left us one example that we dwell on with 
more pleasure than another, it is that of quiet power. 
Here was a man who, without the least show or appa- 
rent ambition of applause or self-assertion, was doing 
day by day a great work. In our day of pretension the 
example is profoundly needed. 

Mr. Capron was a well-balanced and a wise man ; his 
judgment on any point was worth obtaining. He was 
by habit, or by temperament perhaps, conservative, but 
he was very broad and liberal in entertaining new facts, 
new ideas, and all suggestions of an advance at any 
point. He was hospitable to new things, but he never 
lost his head and ran into extravagances. No man of 
our acquaintance scanned more closely the field of 
education, or took more intelligent note of all that is 
good in its most progressive thought and movement. 
We always found him familiar with the advance thought, 
and eager to take whatever is good in it. The time he 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 69 

spent in Europe was devoted to study and observation 
that would accomplish him in his profession, and he 
returned from his residence there with broadened views, 
but in no respect moved from the stability of his fun- 
damental convictions. 

But with all his scholarship, gift as a teacher, and 
intellectual openness, Mr. Capron could not have been 
the man he was in his profession but for other qualities. 
He was profoundly a reHgious man, holding the simple 
Christian faith with childhke sincerity. He was a man 
of the utmost constitutional veracity. What a great 
thing that is to say of any man ! He was all genuine, 
from his scholarship to his religion. He always in- 
spired confidence, and if we ask the source of this in 
his school, in the church, in society, we find that it was 
cJiaracter. It was the sum total of character that made 
this quiet, unobtrusive man the power he was ; it was 
that which organized the school, inspired confidence in 
him, and gave him his hold upon community. So little 
did he ever put himself forward, that only those who 
knew him well were aware of his power or his influence. 

It is not for us, here, to go further into his private 
life. It is enough to say that the warm attachment of 
his pupils for him and of all his associates was due 
quite as much to his kindness and sweetness, and 
nobility of nature, as to his position and his ability in it. 
He was a true man and a true friend. And he was as 
fit to go to heaven as he was to stay here. 
10 



70 OBITUARY NOTICES. 

[From the Hartford Evening Post, Jan. Sth, 1874.] 

A PUBLIC SORROW DEATH OF SAMUEL M. CAPRON, 

PRINCIPAL OF THE HIGH SCHOOL. 

The notice in the latest edition of Saturday evening's 
Post of the unfavorable change in Mr. Capron's con- 
dition, in a measure prepared the public for the sad 
announcement of his death, which occurred Sunday 
morning at 20 minutes before nine o'clock. His dis- 
ease was pneumonia, and with it he had been suffering 
severely only about a week, although he had not been 
well for a considerably longer period. About four 
weeks ago he complained of a severe cold and sore 
throat, but for some time continued to attend to his 
school duties, against the advice of his associates, who 
thought he ought to remain at home. Finally, during 
the last full week preceding the holiday vacation, he did 
so remain, but becoming somewhat better ventured out 
on Monday and Tuesday before Christmas to be present 
at the regular term examinations, and was also out on 
business on the next day, Wednesday. He passed a 
pleasant Christmas, feeling tolerably well, and was down 
town on business Friday morning (Dec. 26th), but 
returning home Friday afternoon was seized with violent 
chills, took to his bed, and never rose more. His sick- 
ness was from the first serious, and Mr. Capron seemed 
to have been in some sort impressed with the idea that 



•OBITUARY NOTICES. Jl 

it was to be unto death, for on the Saturday after the 
attack he sent directions to Mr. Hall, vice-principal of 
the High school, concerning the disposition to be made 
of various open school and business matters, and also 
talked with his wife concerning family matters, in a way 
that showed an expectation of possible fatal termination 
of his illness. Through the week he was very ill, suf- 
fering considerably, and at times partially delirious, but 
on Friday evening he was apparently better, and on 
Friday evening his physicians thought that he would 
certainly recover, which belief the sick man also, for the 
first time, shared. But about 1 1 o'clock Friday night 
there came a sudden and unexpected change, and from 
that time Mr. CajDron steadily failed, suffering much, 
meanwhile, until his death, which occurred as stated. 

And now, having written thus much of our deceased 
friend's last sickness, where shall we find language to 
give a just estimate of his character, or to rightly ex- 
press his inestimable worth } To his family belongs 
the precious memory of his rare virtues as a husband 
and father ; to his church the remembrance of his fidel- 
ity as a co-laborer in the service of the Master ; to the 
public his pure record as a citizen. In each of these 
relations he seemed as near perfection as human crea- 
tures can be, but it is not of these that we would mainly 
speak. It is as the leading instructor of our youth that 
he is best known, and every heart feels his loss as a 
public calamity ; from every lip there comes the question 



72 OBITUARY NOTICES. 

"Where shall we find his equal?" His success as a 
teacher was most remarkable, but was the natural con- 
sequence of his rare qualifications for such a position. 
Perhaps his greatest characteristic was his quiet power. 
In him were perfectly combined the firmness of a man 
and the gentleness of a woman. His voice was never 
raised above its even tone, and yet his spoken will was 
law. And this generally anomalous state of things was 
in large measure due to the profound confidence which 
every scholar had in Mr. Capron's justice. He was 
never swift to reprove, preferring rather first to hear 
what words of palliation might be offered. Once de- 
finitely determined, however, that a given disciplinary 
measure was needed, it was only through the presenta- 
tion of facts that altered the aspects of the case that his 
decision could be changed. As a result of his careful 
consideration, those reproved acknowledged ever the 
justness of the censure. He was wholly frank and 
candid with associate teachers, pupils and parents. He 
was ever open to suggestions concerning general or 
individual welfare, and prompt to act upon such as were 
wholesome. His mental and moral balance was per- 
fect ; his equal-poised control was never disturbed. 
He was remarkably endowed with the faculty of im- 
parting his learning to his pupils and of inspiring them 
with zeal for knowledge. As a teacher of the lan- 
guages he was especially successful, so much so that our 
High school stands in the front rank of preparatory 
institutions, and its srraduates have been among those 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 73 

most honored in college life. Add to all this that he 
was a man of eminently refined tastes, an accomplished 
and thoroughly accurate scholar, a noble gentleman, and 
a consistent Christian, and what more can be said ? 
His scholars loved him, — as well they might. Not one 
of all the hundreds who have been under his care in 
all these twenty years of his school life, ever heard him 
speak in slightest anger ; not one ever, in thought even, 
accused him of favoritism ; not one ever had a feeling 
of unjust treatment at his hands. The regard which 
he inspired in his pupils was as constant as his own 
mind. The scholars of a score of years ago clasp hands 
with those of to-day and find no language but tears to 
express their common grief. Unto them remain the 
precious legacy of his memory and the "lovehness of 
his perfect deeds." 

And so he leaves us in the richness of his prime, — 
taken when apparently he had still a score more years 
of usefulness to live. It is all darkly strange, and we 
cannot understand it, — we only know that he is gone. 
It is needless to say that he went calmly and trustfully. 
The vague fears that hang about death distressed him 
not. His heart was wrung for his poor wife and child- 
ren, but for himself there was no feeling of uneasiness. 
His faith grew stronger as the shadow fell upon him, 
and he passed with perfect peace into the Infinite. 

" The great Intelligences fair 
That range above our mortal state, 
In circle round the blessed gate, 
Received and gave him welcome there." 



74 OBITUARY NOTICES. 

From the Hartford Times, Jan. 5th, 1874. 
THE DEATH OF MR. CAPRON. 

In the death of Samuel M. Capron, the Principal of 
the Hartford High School, that widely-known institu- 
tion sustains a loss which cannot well be repaired. It 
is a loss not alone to the school which his quiet but ju- 
dicious and unceasing labors had done so much to per- 
fect and to elevate to its present eminent position, but 
to the cause of education itself. When we say that 
Mr. Capron was singularly well fitted, both by his natu- 
ral disposition and his educational training, to conduct 
this large and important school — an establishment in 
which the scholars can be thoroughly qualified for a 
collegiate course — we but imperfectly express the truth. 
For in his case it is not saying too much to assert, un- 
qualifiedly, that he was peculiarly 3.nd perfectly adapted 
to his responsible position. His uniformly quiet, mod- 
est, and gentle manner, completely removed as it was 
from even a distant approach to anything like a self- 
assumption, led hundreds who only knew him superfi- 
cially to underestimate his real depth and strength of 
character. Only those who really knew him, those who 
were brought into near and frequent intercourse with 
him, and to whom was given the opportunity to learn 
by experience the union of marked and peculiar ex- 
cellences which so singularly fitted him for his re- 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 75 

sponsible work, can understand the real character and 
extent of the loss which the High School of Hartford 
has sustained. The silent and tearful class-meeting of 
the Senior Class, which to-day assembled to express its 
sense of this bereavement, and at which it was voted 
not to attempt to do so by passing the customary formal 
resolutions, was its own best tribute to the hold he had 
on the scholars, and the completeness of their trust and 
reliance upon him. 

"The silent organ loudest chants 
The master's requiem." 

Mr. Capron first became connected with the High 
School by taking his brother's place as manager of the 
classical department, known as the Grammar School, 
soon after his graduation at Yale in 1853. On his re- 
turn from a year's travel and study in Europe, a dozen 
years later, he became the Principal of the High School. 
In that responsible position he remained till the time of 
his death, giving to each scholar that watchful and un- 
divided attention which can only spring from a truthful 
nature and a genuine enthusiasm for his work, and 
which in his case acted on the pupil as an inspiration. 
His position naturally led to a personal acquaintance 
between himself and many parents of the young ladies 
and gentlemen in the Senior Class especially ; and to 
some it was known that Mr. Capron's interest in the 
educational progress and personal welfare of his schol- 



^6 OBITUARY NOTICES. 

ars was true and earnest, and almost as affectionate as 
it would have been in the case of his own children. 
The young people with whom he was more directly 
brought into daily contact, naturally feel a sense of be- 
reavement beyond anything experienced in other cases 
of the loss of the head of a great school. They have 
resolved to testify their sorrow only in the expressive 
presence, in its accustomed place, of their teacher's 
chair, now draped, and empty, — and by joining the 
remaining teachers in a contribution of pure and fra- 
grant flowers to the coffin which contains all that was 
earthly of the guide and friend they loved so well. 

Mr. Capron's position was one of quiet and unobtru- 
sive but decided and extensive influence. This was 
exerted directly upon the youth of both sexes under 
his immediate charge ; and we rejoice to know that it 
was a good influence in all respects. He was a man of 
undemonstrative but marked character, and one whose 
exceptionally fine scholarship was united to a native 
and practically consistent religious taste and life. Not 
a person who wore his religion upon his coat-sleeve, for 
the public to see and admire, but who felt it in the quiet 
depths of his own heart and lived it out, modestly, but 
practically, in his daily life. 

It would be wrong, perhaps, to say of any man that 
his place can never be filled. Our best men and women 
die, and the world's affairs go on, and the places of the 
dead are filled to more or less acceptance, and every- 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 77 

thing seems, on the mere surface and face of affairs, to 
go on as well as formerly. Yet there are losses by 
death which can only be regarded as public calamities. 
To this community the death of Mr. Samuel M. Capron 
is felt to be such a loss. Probably he was more es- 
teemed and depended upon, by a large part of the com- 
munity, than he was himself aware of. He had the 
power to organize and direct ; and when such a capa- 
city is united — as it sometimes is, though not often — 
to a modest, true, and gentle spirit, and an inborn taste 
as well as a fine training and every natural and acquired 
accomplishment for the high position of a teacher, we 
have the perfected result in such a teacher, and such a 
man as we knew in Samuel M. Capron. 



From the Springfield Republican, Jan. 24th, 1874. 
THE MANLY TEACHER. 

In the recent death of Mr. Capron, Principal of the 
Hartford High School, our neighbor city has been sig- 
nally afflicted. His funeral was a memorable event in 
the annals of Hartford. Very seldom is it that a whole 
city is so thrilled with grief and made one house of 
mourning. The notices of the occasion by the Hart- 
ford press evince an unusual tenderness and carefulness 
of preparation, as if grateful for the privilege, not merely 
II 



y8 OBITUARY NOTICES. 

of voicing the universal sentiment, but of adding their 
personal tribute of sincere and loving eulogy to the 
eloquence of flowers and requiem and tears and suppli- 
cation. The pulpits of the city spoke in like manner 
for their several congregations, and the schools answered 
back with moistened eyes, and especially in the High 
School, when the last hope had fled, and Mr. Capron's 
chair stood vacated forever, both teachers and pupils 
gave way to an overpowering sorrow, and bowed heads 
and the sobs of tremulous hearts usurped the usual 
rites of devotion. It was fitting that Mayor Robinson 
should follow the family pastor in eloquent memorial 
words both for the city and out of the abundance of his 
own personal affection, and that the Episcopal burial 
service should entwine with the Congregational in the 
last rites for him who was the head and center of the 
city's educational interests and "its best-loved man." 
This remarkable place that Mr. Capron had in the 
affectianate esteem of the Hartford community is sug- 
gestive of healthful reflections. 

It is a great encouragement to our quiet, faithful, 
and hard-working teachers. The outburst of grief in 
this case would have been a total surprise to Mr. Capron, 
could he have foreseen it on the eve of death, as it was 
also a surprise to those who knew and loved him best. 
They were not fully aware, till death revealed it, what a 
jewel of a man he was. It was like cutting and setting 
and sudden flashing of a rare diamond, which had 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 79 

been already known to be of purest water, but whose 
extraordinary value had been but vaguely estimated. 

It is a lesson to any community how priceless such 
a man is in his position as an educator. It leads us 
to enquire for the qualities that had won such genuine 
and universal respect. 

They were first and least those which can be meas- 
ured by professional standards, and to some degree by 
a salary price ; the fine and accurate scholarship, the 
sturdy common sense, the even temperament, the steady 
and persistent energy, the organizing and executive 
faculty, and the general culture. But above these pro- 
fessional requisites, first and last and all through there 
were belonging to Mr. Capron the rarest qualities of 
character — the symmetry and equipoise of a well-bal- 
anced manhood. There the deepest conscientiousness, 
the perfect truthfulness, the kindliness that always 
sweetened his sense of justice, the patient survey, the 
candor that made him " swift to hear, slow to speak and 
slow to wrath," the firmness of decision that left no soft 
spot for indefinite appeal, the frank, honest, accessible 
and sympathetic frame which put up no barriers of mere 
professional dignity or martinet authority, the quiet 
moral energy set aglow by a hidden and steady enthusi- 
asm, the unconscious power of grappling at once and 
always with the impressible hearts and minds of youth, 
and so moulding, guiding, inspiring, strengthening — not 
by the rules and dies of discipline so much as by the 



8o OBITUARY NOTICES. 

subtle influence of his own personality, working with 
his pupils both to will and to do, by a gentle but pow- 
erful and magnetic force, kindling up their own moral 
and intellectual aspirations, and educing their own free 
faculties, and so making them spontaneous and manly 
scholars. 

It was just this subtle personality of Mr. Capron, 
summed up in a thoroughly genuine and manly charac- 
ter — the scholar, the gentleman, the Christian — adding 
to his treasures of learning and culture the priceless 
gift of a true and faithful heart, transmuting the teach- 
er's duty into joy, and his responsibility into love, that 
won such general and affectionate esteem, and made 
him such a social power, and opened at last the foun- 
tains of grief which caused a whole city to lift up its 
voice and weep. 

May his beautiful memory flourish and blossom in 
the perennial honor it confers on the ranks of a noble 
profession, in its quiet and unostentatious labors, more 
prized in reality than in appearance, and in the stimulus 
which such a grand example gives to the whole band of 
educators ! 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 



From a Sermon preached in the Asylum Hill Congrega- 
tional Church, Hartford, Jan. 2Sth, 1874., 
by the Rev. J. H. Twichell. 

***** 

The more I think upon Mr. Capron, and the more I 
hear told about him, the more convinced I am, not only 
that his personal influence was in itself extraordinary, 
but that it was the most efficient of his powers. He 
had influence, indeed, from many sources ; — from his 
position, — from his intellectual strength and culture, — 
from his wisdom, — from his enthusiasm, — from his 
faculty of organization and administration, — from the 
science and thoroughness of his methods. Moreover, 
he was endowed with the attributes of a true manliness. 
It used to be said of one of the English monarchs, 
" King Henry knew a manr And in this quiet scholar, 
so gentle and modest and retiring, we had, nevertheless, 
a man. There were no elements of weakness in him. 
His character was positive. He had the courage of his 
own opinions. He carried the force and momentum of 
a manly will. He was firm as a rock in his decisions. 

Yet I do not think that his power was primarily that 
of his manliness ; nor yet of the integrity and reasona- 
bleness and unimpeachable honor that adorned and per- 
fected it. Not any or all of these things could account 
for the exquisite captivation into which he drew the 
hearts of those who were around him, and in which he 
held sway over them, and shaped their minds as by a 



82 OBITUARY NOTICES. 

charm. It is one of the most beautiful things I ever 
knew of. It was an influence that had a silent growth ; 
it could not be told how it grew : it established itself 
unawares. The first they knew, his pupils and associ- 
ates found themselves conscious of a deep sense of obli- 
gation to him, and of wanting to acknowledge it. And 
thereafter their spirits were marvellously subject to him. 
One word of his approval was the sweetest of all praise; 
his very salutation became precious. '' Why," said one 
of the boys, " if Mr. Capron shakes hands with me, or 
only bows to me and bids me 'good morning,' it makes 
me feel like being good all day." And that may stand 
for a specimen of the expressions without number that 
were and are to be heard on every side, all signifying 
the same thing. On the slightest touch of contact a vir- 
tue seems to have gone out of him to set the best im- 
pulses astir and to inspire the thought and purpose of 
well doing. 

It was by cooperation with this noblest of his powers 
of influence that his other strength wrought to its best 
advantage. And what did it come from .^ It was not 
a fascination by speech, or by any sort of formal ex- 
pression. It was not a personal magnetism, — the over- 
flow and radiation of physical vitality. Nor was it the 
fruit of his amiabilities — of his sympathy and kindness, 
though they bore their part in it. No ; the response it 
evoked was, it seems to me, something deeper than 
admiration, or respect, or even affection, though it 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 83 

included them all. The profound source of the power 
he exercised lay back of everything I have named. It 
was his radical iLuselfisJiuess. That, I am persuaded, 
was the secret of the sweet and strong ascendency 
he gained and kept over so many hearts. Samuel M. 
Capron was a man who did not live unto himself. And 
it was that fact more than anything else, that made the 
results of personal relation to him just what they were. 
His influence, wherein it produced the peculiar effect 
it was observed to produce, was essentially a spiritual 
influence. And being such, it did not require the me- 
dium of personal gifts in the ordinary sense, to render 
it operative. It wrought by the communication of 
those subtle spiritual laws that are able to dispense 
with much expression by words or other language. 
There is nothing in this world that is so sure to have 
the power that belongs to it as the principle of vicari- 
ousness in the human breast, wherever it exists, and 
upon that principle the character of our dear friend 
was founded. The Cross of Christ was lifted up in him, 
and whenever the Cross of Christ is lifted up, it draws 
souls to it : it is the most resistless of all forces, though 
the gentlest of all. 

It is a man's life — a man's character that tells. I 
am glad, I am ready to give thanks that Mr. Capron 
was not a man of words or much manifest expression, 
for thereby the power that dwelt in his spirit, — in Iiiin- 



84 OBITUARY NOTICES. 

self, is the more emphasized and revealed. And it was 
exj^ressed in work — work which he chose and loved 
and gloried in, and to which he gave himself up with 
ever new zest and joy, year after year, to do it the best 
he could, unto the end. His whole soul was in his 
calling. " That dear old High school," he murmured 
more than once during his sickness, " I have carried 
it on my heart." 



In the Second Congregational ChiAreh, Hartford, on the day 
of Mr, Capron's death, the Rev. E. P. Parker, in concluding 
a Sernion suggested by the autobiography of John Stuart 
Mill, said: 

***** 

"A very precious, sweet, and useful life has come to 
its earthly bound here in Hartford to-day; the well- 
known, the universally respected and beloved principal 
of the High school in this city fell asleep this morning. 
How humble, how modest, how simple and sincere, how 
true and faithful he was ! No better man lived among 
us. The last man to be deceived, he looked a thing 
through. He put his feet down carefully on the Rock 
and stood there. He knew in whom he believed. 
What say you to Mr. Capron } Being dead he yet 
speaketh." 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 85 

On the same day, in the Pearl Street Congregational Church, 
Hartford, the Rev. V^. L. Gage in a Sermon on " Perfected 
Christian Manhood," froni the text, "And the city lielh 
four-square; the length and the breadth and the height 
thereof are ecjual," said : 

* * * # * 

" Since entering these courts to-day, many of us have 
received the tidings that one who was an admirable 
illustration of our theme has passed into the conditions 
of still more glorified manhood than he had on earth. 
And those who have not heard of his death will hardly 
need to be told that I refer to the beloved and honored 
Samuel M. Capron. Rarely do we meet a man more 
rounded and balanced than he: so that although he 
may have been excelled in particulars, he has rarely 
been surpassed in the wholeness of his character. I 
cannot now portray that which we now so sadly miss 
among us. It was my good fortune to know him well, 
to labor by his side in the educational interests of the 
city ; and I can testify that almost more than any one 
whom I have known, he resembled that city which lieth 
four-square, and whose height and length and breadth 
are equal ; and it is with a sad and melancholy pleasure, 
that I now drop this little handful of flowers on his 
untimely grave." 



In other churches brief mention of the death of Mr. 
Capron was also made, the announcement being received 
with profound sorrow, which often found expression in 

tears. 

12 



86 OBITUARY NOTICES. 



From a Seri-non preached by Rev. C. H. B. Tremaine in St. 

Thomas' (Episcopal) Church, Hartford, 

Jan. 11th, 1874. 

* * * * * 

"A great sorrow rests upon our city. One has been 
taken from us -who was most dearly beloved by all, and 
whose death is universally deplored. His loss is a 
public calamity. In our deep grief it seems to us as if 
his place could never be filled. Faults he may have 
had as he was but human ; but from a long and intimate 
acquaintance with him I could not, if I desired, mention 
one. Indeed to the young with whom he was asso- 
ciated, and who always loved him with a sincere and 
abiding affection, he seemed a perfect man. There 
were united in him the rarest intellectual gifts, the 
most remarkable fitness for his chosen profession, and 
the noblest virtues as a man. Nor was this all ; his 
whole life was crowned and glorified by his earnest 
unpretending piety, by his childlike faith in Jesus 
Christ. As the wise men of old — whose visit to the 
Infant Saviour we commemorate at this season — brought 
their rich gifts and humbly offered them to Christ, so 
in no less degree did our beloved friend and teacher 
give himself, body, soul, and sjoirit, to the service of the 
same Lord. 

It is not my purpose to add any words of eulogy to 
what has been said by those better fitted for this duty 
than myself — nor are such words necessary. My de- 
sire is rather to offer a humble tribute of affection and 



OBITUARY NOTICES. 8/ 

gratitude to his precious memory. And yet much as 
has been said, prompted by loving hearts, concerning 
his many virtues, still the whole truth has not been 
told, nor can it ever be. No language can begin to 
express the wondrous beauty and surpassing worth of 
the earthly life of him who has just gone to the rest of 
Paradise. Some lasting memorial of him will no doubt 
be placed in the scene of his labors — the spot so dear 
to him — but yet there is a far more enduring record 
written in letters of undying love deep in the hearts of 
thousands. 

The evil which men do lives after them ; but God be 
praised that the power of good deeds also cannot perish. 
And the blessed influence of such a pure and holy life 
as was that of our beloved brother can never be esti- 
mated — neither will it ever die. Let us then thank 
God for the good example of all those of his servants, who 
having finished their course in faith do now rest from 
their labors, and pray that we with them may have our 
perfect consummation and bliss both in body and soul 
in the mansions of eternal glory — through Jesus Christ, 
our Lord. 



Trinity Church— Tribute to Mr. Capron. 

In Trinity church yesterday morning, after the ser- 
mon, the rector, the Rev. Professor Johnson, made a 
brief address commemorative of the life and character 
of the late Mr. Capron, thanking God for the example 
of such a pure and perfect Christian life. He then. 



55 OBITUARY NOTICES. 

in behalf of the afflicted city and community, requested 
the congregation to unite with him in special prayer for 
persons under affliction, and thanksgiving for the mem- 
ory of those who, having finished this life in the faith 
and fear of Christ, do rest from their labors. 



From an Editorial in the Hartford Courant, Feb. 3d, 1874. 

The age of no-faith in anything but money and 
cheek is nearly ended. A belief in goodness and truth, 
and honesty and purity, is surely coming again as a 
living faith in the hearts of men. There may be less 
regard for creeds, but there will be a more intelligent 
faith in the central idea of all creed, a faith in a per- 
sonal God — 

That God, which ever lives and loves, 
One God, one law, one element, 
And one far-off divine event, 
To which the whole creation moves. 

The young men will no longer look upon the acqui- 
sition of wealth, and the ability of fast-living as the 
great object to be attained in life. They will learn that 
a good name is better than riches, the consciousness of 
rectitude and virtue better than the transitory pleasures 
of unholy living ; that a successful and happy life is 
not measured by dollars and cents ; that to live such a 
life as the late Principal of our High School, and to 
leave such a name as his, is far better than to have 
secured untold wealth and fame at the cost of integrity 
and self respect. 



THE FUNERAL. 



From tlie Hartford Courant, Jan. 8th, 1874. 
SERVICES AT ASYLUM MILL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH. 

Before ten o'clock, the hour appointed for paying 
the last tribute of public honor and respect to the late 
Samuel M. Capron, the Asylum Hill Congregational 
church was filled. In spite of the tempest of rain that 
was prevailing, people came from every part of the city 
— all denominations, all ranks in life were represented. 
The seats in the church were filled, and the aisles were 
filled. And in all faces was the same expression of 
profound grief ; telling its own story of how the man 
was loved. 

The Christmas greens still hung in the church, and 
to these was added about the desk the drapery of 
mourning and the tribute of flowers. All the decora- 
tions were simple, but the white flowers were abundant, 
and there were emblematic wreaths, crosses and crowns 
woven of white and green. Over against the seat that 
had been occupied by the deceased hung a shield with 
the motto — " Mark the perfect man." 



90 THE FUNERAL. 

After a short prayer at the house the remains were 
brought to the church, accompanied by the clergy, 
the mourners and friends, and as the sad procession 
passed up the aisle, the audience stood in tearful silence. 
The pall bearers were Josej^h Hall, vice-principal of the 
High school, and Augustus Morse, principal of the 
North Middle school ; Elisha Johnson and Alfred E. 
Burr, of the High school committee ; H. J. Johnson 
and F. L. Gleason, senior deacons of the Asylum Hill 
church ; and Drs. Stearns and Hudson, college class- 
mates of the deceased. 

The Rev. Dr. Burton began the services by a brief 
invocation. The Rev. C. R. Fisher read the scriptures 
used in the Episcopal funeral service. Dr. Burton then 
read and the Christ church quartette (with Mr. Wilson 
at the organ) sang with great feeling three verses of the 
hymn : 

Asleep in Jesus ! blessed sleep. 

The Rev. Mr. Twichell offered prayer, at the con- 
clusion of which he delivered the following address : 

THE REV. MR. TWICHELL's ADDRESS. 

When Mr. Capron knew that he was dying, being of 
an undisturbed mind, and tranquilly contemplating all 
that pertained to his departure from this life, he spoke 
concerning his funeral. He said, as you might know 
he would, '* Let it be as quiet an affair as may be, for I 



THE FUNERAL. 9I 

have been a quiet man, and have not made much stir in 
the world." 

And they to whom the ordering of it is committed 
are making it as quiet an affair as they feel at liberty 
to — as, in fact, it seems possible to. In bringing his 
remains from the home where he dwelt with his family, 
to have the last words said over them in this place 
where he worshiped his God and Saviour, since it is 
done for the sake of those whom he loved and who 
loved him, there is no transgression of the spirit of 
privacy. For it is written in all your faces, that though 
this occasion is, in a manner, public, it is none the 
less truly to the heart of every one of you a private 
occasion. 

Mr. Capron thought that he had made little stir in 
this world — and by that he meant, I suppose, in this com- 
munity. Yet I never saw this community so stirred as 
it has been these last few days because of him. In the 
years I have lived here, I have never seen the city of 
Hartford in such trouble as it is now. A stranger 
passing through our streets would know that we are 
in trouble. From the first day that he was reported to 
be dangerously sick there were everywhere manifest 
tokens of an unusual distress, and when finally the 
word went round that he was no more, it is not too 
much to say that the people lifted up their voice and 
wept. Nor is it this city alone that feels the stroke. 
From far and near there come to us signs witnessing 



92 THE FUNERAL. 

that many citizens of many other places partake of the 
affliction. It is a remarkable — I had almost said a 
strange phenomenon — the effect of this event. 

It were quite superfluous in me to attempt to depict 
the feeling produced by it, for it is one which we share 
in common. I will say of it only this, that while the 
sense of personal bereavement and of a public loss is 
so great that we seem to have received a check in our 
general prosperity, are the chief elements of it, there is 
also mingled with it something of a sense of surprise. 
Much as we loved and honored Mr. Capron — high as 
the mark of value which we set upon him was, we could 
hardly have imagined that his death would take such 
a hold upon us and create such a profound sensation as 
it does. To him, certainly, could he have foreseen it, 
it would have been a surprise, and it is, in some meas- 
ure, a surprise to us. Many of us, at any rate, and I 
presume most of us, are confessing that we had not 
been aware till now of how much we thought of him, or 
of what was thought of him. By his sickness, when it 
was feared to be mortal, it was revealed to me at least, 
very impressively, both in what I felt myself and in the 
feeling I saw expressed in others — in the look and tone 
with which they inquired about him and spoke of him — 
that I had not begun either to know my own heart 
toward him, or to appreciate the significance of his 
life, or to realize the quality of the regard in which he 
was held. And as his friend and pastor I had antici- 



THE FUNERAL. 



93 



pated a peculiar satisfaction when, if it pleased God to 
recover him of his sickness, he should be convalescent, 
in telling how it was, though I doubted if I could make 
him believe it. 

But he has gone from us never dreaming that he 
could be so accounted of as he is to-day, and we are left 
to ask what was it in him that prepared us, in such a 
degree unconsciously, to be so moved as we are, at be- 
ing called to bid him the long farewell. Wherein lay 
his power ? For what we recognize as evidenced by 
all these signs that now appear, is that he was a man 
of power. And it is, I think, in having this fact dis- 
covered to us, as it never was or could have been be- 
fore, that we experience the surprise I have spoken of. 
For he did not seem like a man of power. You know 
what I mean. His appearance and manner, as he 
moved among us, and went about his work, were not 
such, as in our superficial ways of thinking, we are ac- 
customed to associate with the idea of power. Neither 
did he visibly possess the gifts of expression and com- 
munication that some men have. I do not at all mean 
to imply that his power was hid, for it was not. Proofs 
of it there were, abundant and constant, and all the 
more notable because it was so httle advertised in him- 
self. I well remember observing the operation of it 
before I knew him, both in the life and ambition with 
which the minds of his pupils were inspired, and in the 
extraordinary enthusiasm with which they all, and those 
13 



94 THE FUNERAL. 

who had been his pupils, and those who were associated 
with him as teachers, beheved in him, and I wondered 
how that still and undemonstrative man could so rouse 
them and take their hearts. He had power very great 
in degree and very noble in kind. That is plain enough. 
Such mourning as ours is to-day, were not possible save 
when a strong as well as a good man is fallen. Yet we 
have to look under the surface to find the secret of the 
strength that clothed this life now ended. And we 
shall not look in vain. Mr. Capron, for all that he 
moved in such quietness among us and made so little 
noise, was really a man of a most profound and intense 
enthusiasm. And this enthusiasm burned all the more 
steadily in his bosom, and was all the more sustained 
as a motive with him, for the very reason that it was 
not in his nature to give it much outward expression. 
Yet it had expression, as everything that is in a man 
must have. It was ^,rpressed for it was 2';;^pressed. 
What matter how, it was communicated and reproduced. 
Of course it was, for nothing but enthusiasm can make 
enthusiasm. 

And added to his enthusiasm was a rare wisdom to 
guide it, and which did guide it to its secure results. 
And next I should name that golden integrity, that 
perfect truthfulness, that justice which was universally 
felt to be so omnipresent and inseparable a quality of 
his mind and character, that it was expected of him 
pretty much as the sun is expected to shine. But these 



THE FUNERAL. 95 

last were among the more apparent and readily recog- 
nized sources of his power. Not quite so obvious was 
his possession of a robust, inflexible will, which, how- 
ever, nearness to him soon revealed. Still less man- 
ifest to a casual observation was another trait of power 
that crowned all the rest and set them free to have 
their full effect — and that was his deep and tender 
affectionateness. He was one of the most sympathetic 
and loving of men. Underneath the mask of his con- 
stitutional reserve there was as quick and warm and 
responsive a heart as ever beat, and O, what a pure and 
faithful heart it was ! And herein, too, notwithstanding 
he did not much express himself in the ordinary form, 
he still was expressed. For the love and* loyalty he 
won, and that we saw him wearing as one fair trophy> 
of success, and that are translated in the eloquence of 
flowers and tears to-day, show it. You, especially, who 
were his pupils, were exceedingly dear to him, and that 
was why he was and is and will be so exceedingly dear 
to you. And I will only say more, for I must be very 
brief and leave almost everything unsaid for the present, 
that the love with which he loved you, as you all know, 
was a love he bore you for Christ's sake. You cannot 
doubt that. The best and truest part of his power as 
a man, was that which belonged to him as a Christian 
man. It came from a Power that was upon him. The 
last book that Mr. Capron read was the autobiography 
of John Stuart Mill, the man without a God. And the 



g6 THE FUNERAL. 

last time he went abroad from his house he gave to a 
friend whom he chanced to meet an account of what 
he had been reading. And as they parted at the cor- 
ner of Asyhmi and Main streets, Mr. Capron said as 
his final comment upon it, " What a glorious thing this 
hope of ours in Christ is." You were not surprised to 
hear that hope remained with him to his last hour and 
proved itself to be a glorious hope — that by reason of 
it the shadows of death were turned into brightness 
about him. It was even so. Our friend laid him down 
in the sleep that knows no waking in perfect peace, 
resting^ like a little child, in the arms of the Saviour 
whom he trusted. And now, ye young men and women, 
to whom so many times in life he gave instruction, let 
him in death teach you one more lesson — even that 
which he desired you to learn before all other knowl- 
edge. Hear these dumb lips once more repeat — hear 
it, too, ye men and brethren, and let the echo of it 
linger in your souls, "How glorious a thing the hope in 
Christ is." 

After another hymn by the choir, 

Jesus, Lover of my Soul, 

Mayor Robinson, at the request of the family, and as a 
representative of the city, spoke as follows : — 

In compliance with the wishes of those who were 
and are dearest to our beloved one, I have, with some 
hesitation, consented to add a few words to those so well 
said by our reverend friend, in memory of our dead. 



THE FUNERAL. 97 

This vast assembly of budding childhood and silvered 
old age, representing all types of activity and station 
in our community, this sable drapery of woe, these 
sweet flowers, in wreath, and star, and cross, and crown, 
these trembling lips, these eyes veiled in tears, tell 
more impressively than can speech, that our city mourns 
with unaffected grief. It is possible when a public 
man dies to create a demonstration of mourning which 
shadows no substance of sorrow. But the bitterness 
of soul which bubbles up to-day is as sincere and nat- 
ural as the mountain spring. Indeed, as we met upon 
the streets at the first story of his death, even the 
common salutation was universally changed to the tone 
of affliction, and the city seemed like the city of the 
Egyptians, where "there was not a house in which there 
was not one dead." Our city mourns in the house of 
its pride and the house of its love. 

The loss of a leader in any of the influential pro- 
fessions and employments, is always a bereavement and 
often an alarm. These great vacancies stagger faith 
and paralyze hope. But there is something peculiarly 
tender and touching in the death, at the threshold of 
maturity, of a leader in that profession, which with a 
kind of catholic fatherhood, moulds and guides the sen- 
sitive mind and heart of young students, and so fashions, 
we know not how comprehensively, the moral and 
intellectual life of society. 



98 THE FUNERAL. 

I have spoken of him whom we mourn as a leader 
in his honorable profession. To my own apprehension 
he realized the noblest ideal of his profession. Had he 
chosen to be a clergyman, a lawyer, a statesman, or an 
editor, his success would have been assured, but it is 
hardly probable that in either of these callings he 
would have accomplished so much for the good of man- 
kind as he has as a teacher. To natural qualifications 
of the highest and rarest order he added such mental 
discipline and culture, such treasures of scholarship and 
learning as perfected him in his work. A classical 
scholar of the highest type, an accomplished student in 
mathematics and the physical sciences, he still delighted 
in the exhaustless wealth of our own English language 
and its literature. 

Let me briefly, for the few minutes allotted to me 
will allow no more, indicate one or two of the striking 
qualities of our friend in his profession. His profes- 
sional character was based upon a broad, solid found- 
ation of common sense. No wild thought of the hour, 
no vagary of a theorist, no vision of a dreamer found a 
resting place with him. Conservative, he suggested 
many and welcomed all improvements, but nothing 
upon the breath of a mere impulse, or the fancy of a 
moment. Enterprising, he honored in system and 
practice that which had been proved and found worthy. 
In the searching judicature of his sound sense the 
hollowness of sham was detected and the weight of 



THE FUNERAL. 99 

solid merit was appreciated and added to his treasury. 
Keeping quite abreast of the most advanced aggressions 
of science, and assured in the peace of his deepest 
consciousness of the complete harmony of all truth, he 
still held fast to those central facts which the experi- 
ence of the ages has made sure, and to that divine 
Christianity which has carried the world on to its no- 
blest and purest civilization. 

To his strong good sense he added a right estimate 
and use of discipline. Believing in law as the only 
true liberty of action, he sought to make rules for his 
pupils and not to make pupils for his rules. Like all 
wise rulers, he followed the Infinite sovereign, who 
wrote with His finger upon the stony tablets command- 
ments for His creatures, not as arbitrary enactments, 
but as rules for His creatures' good. And so the Great 
Teacher, when criticised by worshipers of legal techni- 
cality, reproved their flippancy by reminding them that 
law was made for man, and not man for law. The 
discipline of the High School will be remembered by 
his pupils as an easy yoke, Hke the family regulations of 
a loving father. 

Again, Mr. Capron was conscientious in his work. 
He fulfilled his undertaking. Not forgetting the con- 
tract obligations of his employment, he was faithful to 
those higher obligations of duty which reach deeper 
than salaries and call for responses to confidence. But 
he did not stop with the discharge of his duty. He 
L.of C. 



100 THE FUNERAL. 

was an enthusiast in his profession. And just here is 
often the distinction between excellence and eminence. 
Conscientiousness is first and greatest — without it there 
can be no completeness. And in this to-day, we can- 
not magnify it too much. But a fulfilment of duty and 
no more is after all only prose. Enthusiasm adds the 
charm of poetry. To the accuracy, and honesty, and 
completeness of the faithful servant and contractor, he 
added the charms and intensities of the enthusiast. 

Let me add but one more of his professional traits. 
I mean the preservation of his individual character and 
his power of impressing it upon his pupils. Our be- 
loved friend was in school always the teacher, but he 
was always himself. And here is the power of the 
teacher — this wondrous subtle force which reproduces 
him in his pupils. And here is the teacher's good glory ; 
and here, when he rests from his labors, his works fol- 
low him. The author, by his words, influences readers 
and new readers ; the orator, by the electricity of his 
eloquence, stirs the hearts of thousands, but how often 
his power dies, like the lightning in the air w^hen the 
flash is over ; the painter by his canvas, the sculptor by 
his marble, the architect by his towers, arches, and 
domes, penetrates the thoughts of men, — but the per- 
fect teacher impresses himself upon the hearts and 
characters of his pupils more tenderly and in more un- 
fading tone than the sunbeams can stamp his features 
upon the photographer's plate. And so upon the throb- 



THE FUNERAL. lOI 

bing hearts of these his pupils of to-day and of yester- 
day our friend has stamped himself into the fibres of 
their being. I dare to say that of the 3,000 or 5,000 
pupils who have come under his influence in these 
twenty years, not one has ever parted from him except 
in unbounded respect and sincere love. Such a record 
is seldom made for the teacher. It is to these and other 
qualities of our friend to which I cannot allude that we 
owe in great part the eminence universally conceded 
to our High School, an institution unsurpassed by any 
high school in the land. 

And now a word of my friend as a man. It is 
almost twenty-five years since we met at the beginning 
of college life : — college life ! unreal as a romance, yet 
real as the great outer world in miniature. I was pre- 
possessed with attachment to him for his brother's 
sake, who had been my loved teacher in this same High 
School. Thank God that this dear brother was at home 
from his labor of love beyond the seas, and was per- 
mitted to be with him whom we mourn to-day, as he 
went down through the dark river in the peace of holy 
faith. Through the dark river ! and on — and up — to 
the purer and better life. 

From that first day of college life to the close of its 
four years of sunlight, and through the twenty years 
of our life together in this beautiful city, which he 
learned deeply to love, I have known him thoroughly 
and loved him even more. I believe there never fell 
14 



I02 THE FUNERAL. 

from those lips, which shall throb no more with the tide 
of life, one unkind word to any of his fellow m'en, nor 
^one utterance of detraction, for that noble, generous 
heart had no home for malice or bitterness. 

Of his sincerity, truthfulness, tenderness, faithfulness, 
sympathy, and singular sense of justice, I will not now 
speak, nor will I enter into any analysis of his intellect. 
I will particularize but one trait in his character — that 
trait is courage. Little did those who imperfectly knew 
him, who saw him pass along with unassuming manner, 
who felt in his presence at first a consciousness in him 
of reserve, know that he who was as gentle as a woman 
was as truly brave as a hero. 

When our Lord spoke to the multitude upon the 
mountain, He covered with the halo of His beatitude, 
the poor in spirit, the meek, the peace-makers, the pure 
in heart. That halo of beatitude rests upon our dead. 
The apostle St. Peter built into one beautiful arch the 
real graces of goodness and greatness — faith, the cor- 
ner stone, manliness, knowledge, self-control, patience, 
piety, brotherly-kindness, and love, the key-stone. Our 
beloved friend incarnated them all, and all in a harmony 
as beautiful as the blending of the prismatic hues into 
light. If he was the perfect teacher, few have come 
nearer the stature of the perfect man. His course was 
as steady and true and symmetrical as the orbit of a 
planet. And who shall measure the influence of one 
such life .'' Who shall " bind the sweet influences of 



THE FUNERAL. 



103 



the Pleiades"? One such man demonstrates the divine 
within us ; demonstrates the sweet power of the Rose 
of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley ; demonstrates 
the sacredness of our holy religion, which was his in- 
spiration and his life. What an outfit for the eternal 
life must such a character be ! 

Forty-one years ! The table lands of life just reached 
and the sun just at noon. Before him what usefulness ! 
what joy in his victory ! And the sun has gone down. 
And our hopes withered as lilies in the frost, our hearts 
bleeding like bruised vines. And there are desolations 
of which I may not, dare not speak. Forty-one years ; 
how full ! how busy ! how blessed ! The tick of the 
watch and the course of the sun are but man's ways of 
measuring life. There are no measures of years, there 
is no time with God. Who shall say what life is the 
fullest and longest ? 

The Romans thought that studying monumental in- 
scriptions weakened the memory. It was a maxim of 
heathen. Let us study the memorials of our brother 
and teacher and friend. 



" Sleep well, my brother ! sleep, precious dust ! 
Call, he shall answer Thee, God of the Just!" 



The choir again sang, the benediction was pronounced, 
and opportunity was given the vast concourse to look 



104 THE FUNERAL. 

once more on the features of the man whose loss is so 
deeply deplored. All the services were simple, tender, 
sincere, and very impressive. 

The remains were taken to Uxbridge, Mass., the 
home of the deceased's father, for interment. 



[Courant, Feb. 17.] 

IN MEMORIAM 

S. M. C. 

OB. Jan. 4, 1874 : 

Lord, to what end thy Sabbaths, if no rest 
Visit our hearts ? Peace is thy name ; but we, 
We wage unequal warfare all our days, 
And strike with unarmed hands a weaponed Fate. 
Thinking on him for whom our hearts are sore, 
I paced the churchward path ; and for his sake, 
Rough seemed the way, colder the cruel wind, 
And all the day a darkness to my eyes. 
God was not in the church ; an idle word 
Passed by a listless ear : I sat and heard. 
And did not hear, lost in a bitter dream. 
But when the hymn soared up, and seemed to make 
Something like music in a jarring world, 
Once and again my wandering painful thoughts 
Clung round the measure, as in eddies cling 
Leaves, round some branch whereon they did not grow. 
So broken fragments of half-conscious rhyme 
Mixed in my untuned soul with tuneless prayer. 
******* 

Only a moment ago you were with us. 
All our heart's loyalty laid at your feet ; 

Suddenly, now, you are heir to such riches, 

You drop our poor gifts for a treasure more sweet. 



I06 IN MEMORIAM. 

So you were with us, as in a dim courtyard, 

Where babes play all day with bare feet on the stone, 

Some alien child is their comrade and ruler, 

Lights up their dull sports with a fire of his own. 

He knows a strange tale of the house he was born in ; 

Half charmed and half scornful, they listen around : 
One day the lost father comes sudden and splendid ; — 

He flings the worn toys that he held to the ground. 

Can they be sure, in the dazzle and wonder, 
Just what they saw, turning back with a sigh .-' 

Something flashed out — do you think it was sunshine ? 
And what was it waved, as the carriage went by ? 

Still in their hearts and their mouths the tradition 
Vaguely lives on, with its promise and pain ; 

Eyes that have looked on that fair broken vision 
Never can rest in their darkness again. 

So we — but we faint while we yearn and endeavor, 
Wondering, When is the dream coming true ? 

Oh, our lost leader ! you spoke and we hastened ; 
How can we follow a meaner than you ? 



O God — if thou be God that hadst the heart 

To make us and to leave us here so far. 

So far away and dark ! Thy work am I, 

Therefore I must be heard when I accuse : 

Answer me. Lord, who once must answer thee. 

Faithless are we and base ; out of Earth's clay 

Fashioned at first, and still to Earth returning. 

So her dull dust stops up forevermore 

Our ears from hearing, and beclouds our eyes. 

That else might see thee ; but this man, thou knowest, 

Held by thy hand, and felt thee in the dark. 



IN MEMORIAM. 

So, when we touched him, keener pulses ran 

Through our thick blood, and vaguely we looked round, 

Half conscious of a God. And must we think 

Somewhere there is another world, so poor. 

It needs must have our riches ? so forlorn. 

Forgotten in a corner of thy realm, 

Thou hast more need of proving, there than here ? 

Nay, Lord, and could not all the heavenly host 

Suffice to do thy pleasure ? To that space 

Of fearful light that lies around thy feet, 

Myriads of angels gather from afar. 

And cannot rest for love, their cloudless eyes 

Rapt on thy face, if by celestial chance 

Some errand fall their way : and wouldst thou take 

Our master from our head, the time unripe, 

Unwr ought the work, the grasses all unsown 

That should have dressed his grave ? 



Wild my words ; do you reprove them 
With the eyes you used to wear. 

Calmer, now, the brow above them. 
By so much as heaven is fair ? 

Ah, and has your heaven consoled you 
For our helpless tears that start ? 

All its starry secrets told you. 

For one woman's widowed heart ? 

Was there one, you smiled in learning. 

One dear secret of belief, 
In an ecstasy discerning 

All the blindness of our grief ? 

Oh, but us the night abuses ; 

And our sorrow aches and burns : 



107 



I08 IN MEMORIAM. 

Better gifts our heart refuses ; 
Give the one for which it yearns 



So swayed my soul, rocked on a bitter flood 
Of sombre questioning ; and none replied, 
Nor any voice made answer ; but the wind, 
Without the casement tossing the great pine. 
Threw up unfaithful shadows on the wall ; 
And through the dazzle of my tears I saw, 
High up, the phantom of a shaken Cross. 



M. A. B. 



AT THE HIGH SCHOOL. 



From the Evening Post of Jan. 5th. 

Although the announcement was made in the morn- 
ing paper that the school would not be opened until 
after the funeral, there was still a considerable gathering 
of scholars there this morning. Some few who came 
were shocked with sudden surprise at the announce- 
ment of his death, but nearly all were previously aware 
of the sad event, and spoke in hushed tones and with 
manifest grief at their loss. The senior class which 
was under Mr. Capron's more immediate care, gathered 
in their class-room and took formal and appropriate ac- 
tion concerning his death, and their attendance upon 
the funeral services, arranging also for floral tributes 
to be placed upon his coffin. 



Fronn the Evening Post of January 6th. 
MEETING OF HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES. 

A notice appeared in the morning paper calling a 
meeting of the graduates of the High School at the 
15 



no AT THE HIGH SCHOOL. 

High School building to-day, to take action concerning 
the death of Mr. Capron, and although the notice was 
limited and the weather very unpleasant, there was 
nevertheless a large gathering of ladies and gentlemen 
at the specified time and place. Arthur N. Hollister 
was appointed chairman of the gathering, and Charles 
H. Clark secretary. Remarks expressive of the deep 
sorrow of the graduates at the loss of their beloved in- 
structor and friend were made by Mr. Hollister, Rev. 
C. H. B. Tremaine, James A. Smith, Jr., C. H. Owen, 
A. Harbison, J. L. Barbour, and others, and trembling 
tones and tearful eyes testified to the profound emotion 
of those present. There seemed to be a general idea 
that formal resolutions expressive of the sorrow felt 
M^ould be both inadequate and superfluous, but a com- 
mittee consisting of Messrs. Owen, Barbour, and Smith 
was appointed to suggest some suitable form of com- 
memorative action. This committee, after deliberation, 
reported the following, looking to the carrying out of an 
expressed wish of the deceased : 

Whereas, No more fitting tribute can be paid to the memory of 
Samuel M. Capron than to perpetuate the influences of his teaching 
and to carry into effect the plans his death has left unfinished ; 
therefore, 
Resolved, That a committee consisting of Charles H. Owen, A. N. 
Hollister, Seymour Tryon, Miss Jennie A. Bidwell, and Miss Kate Bur- 
bank be appointed to report to some future meeting plans for the or- 
ganization of an association of graduates of the High and Grammar 
schools, in accordance with the expressed wishes of Mr. Capron and as 
a memorial of him. 



AT THE HIGH SCHOOL. I I I 

The resolution was adoi^ted unanimously, and the 
secretary was requested to communicate to the family 
of Mr. Capron a record of the action taken by his 
former scholars with an expression of their heartfelt 
sympathy. The Rev. Mr. Tremaine suggested the pro- 
priety of presenting to the school some tangible memo- 
rial of the deceased, possibly in the shape of a library, 
and it was understood that the committee appointed, as 
above stated, should take the suggestion into consider- 
ation. At the close of the meeting, the roll was called 
and members of the following graduating classes re- 
sponded, all but four out of the entire twenty since 
Mr. Capron became connected with the school being 
represented: '54, '55, '56, '58, '61, '63, '64, '65, '66, '67, 
'68, '69, '70, '71, '72, '73. 



From the Evening Post of January 8th. 
AT HIGH SCHOOL. 

The teachers and scholars of the High School met 
this morning in the school building for the first time 
since Mr. Capron's death. It was a very sad meeting. 
The scholars, as usual, assembled at nine o'clock in the 
class-rooms, proceeding thence immediately to the 
school-hall, where the morning devotional exercises are 
held. Here it was that the bereavement which the 
members of the school, collectively and individually, 



112 AT THE HIGH SCHOOL. 

had sustained, seemed to force itself upon them in all 
its dreadful sadness. The pleasant voice that had been 
wont to direct the morning's devotions, was not heard ; 
the kindly face that teachers and scholars had looked 
upon, was absent ; the hand that had daily touched the 
bell to secure silence or in token of dismissal, had van- 
ished. The Principal's vacant chair and the desk by 
which he had stood were draped in mourning, and be- 
hind desk and chair, upon the wall, were folds of funeral 
drapery parting over a pure white tablet upon which 
appeared in evergreen letters, the simple legend : 

S. M. C. 
1 832-1 874. 

When the scholars were all seated, Mr. Hall, the 
acting Principal, read a portion of the fifth chapter of 
the Gospel according to St. Matthew, comprising the 
beatitudes as set forth in the Sermon on the Mount. 
Then the following beautiful hymn, one of Mr. Capron's 
favorites, was sung to the sweet strains of "Dawn." 

One sweetly solemn thought 

Comes to me o'er and o'er — 
Nearer my parting hour am I 

Than e'er I was before. 

Nearer my Father's house, 

Where many mansions be ; 
Nearer the throne where Jesus reigns, 

Nearer the crystal sea ; 



AT THE HIGH SCHOOL. II3 

Nearer my going home, 

Laying my burden down, 
Leaving my cross of heavy grief. 

Wearing my starry crown. 

Jesus ! to thee I cling : 

Strengthen my arm of faith ; 
Stay near me while my way-worn feet 

Press through the stream of death. 

Following the singing of the hymn, in which many, 
owing to their emotion, were unable to join, Mr. Hall 
offered prayer, embodying fit words of supplication for 
comfort in the overshadowing affliction, and at the con- 
clusion of the prayer tried to say a few words touching 
the sad event that filled all hearts. He alluded to the 
great loss sustained, and to the fact that as yet it could 
not be fully realized ; counseled the scholars to learn 
of Mr. Capron's life and teachings, and was going on to 
say more, but his great grief overcame him, and he was 
obliged to abandon the attempt at speech, signifying to 
Mr. Merriam to take up the theme, which the latter did 
at length, touching upon the inestimable virtues of the 
deceased, his gentleness, patience, and fatherly kind- 
ness, and urging the scholars to strive to live in accord- 
ance with the principles which Mr. Capron professed, 
and to take to heart the lessons of the sad bereavement. 
Following Mr. Merriam's remarks the bell of dismissal 
was sounded, and the sorrowful scholars repaired to 
their respective class-rooms. Throughout the entire 
exercises the school was in tears, and the scene was 
one of most painful and oppressive sadness. 



GRADUATION ADDRESS, 

WITH VALEDICTORY 

DELIVERED AT THE 

HARTFORD PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL, 

April 24th, 1S74. 
BY ABBY M. WILLIAMS. 

The Holy Grail. 

On a bright spring morning of the olden time a small 
band of sturdy knights, mounted and equipped for a 
long journey, might have been seen slowly passing the 
drawbridge of the stately castle of Camelot. 

The portcullis dropped with a surly clang and the 
knights rode forth in silence, pausing not until they 
reached a slight eminence overlooking the castle, when, 
as if by common consent, they drew rein and turned to 
cast one final, lingering look upon the proudest hall in 
all that goodly land. 

Before them stretches an enchanting landscape, clad 
in spring's brightest garb. There lies the jousting-field 
where their earliest enthusiasm was kindled, and where 
they won their earliest triumphs; they hear for the 
last time the convent bells ringing out their matin 



THE HOLY GRAIL. II5 

chimes, and the famihar sound brings memories of one 
whom they had laid to rest one bright September day. 
When his knightly career was scarcely begun, when his 
hopes and theirs were highest he had been summoned 
home. The gilded turrets of Merlin's Hall, ghstening 
in the sunlight, recall many a revel and delightful tale 
of knightly deeds ; they recall the solemn vows made 
the last time they had gathered about the Round Table. 
But the saddest, fondest memories are of their king. 
Only a few months before they had borne him, sorely 
wounded, from the battle-field to the little chapel by the 
lake, and when they knew that he must die, had ten- 
derly carried him to the margin of the meer, had seen 
the dusky barge slowly approach the shore, had tearfully 
entrusted his loved form to the three queens with 
crowns of gold, and had heard these parting words of 
his — " Farewell, I am going a long way with these thou 
seest, to the valley of Avalon, where falls not hail, or 
rain, or any snow, or ever wind blows loudly ; but it 
lies deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns and 
bowery hollows crowned with summer sea, where I will 
heal me of my grievous wound." 

Long had they stood, revolving many memories, 
watching the barge, with .oar and sail, move slowly from 
the brink till the hull looked like one black dot against 
the verge of dawn. Slowly and sadly they had returned 
to their deserted hall, and in the first agony of their 
grief had vowed, by his dear memory, to seek, by land 



Il6 THE HOLY GRAIL. 

and sea, the Holy Grail, and cease not till they found 
it. 

And now they stand upon the hill-top which divides, 
as it were, a former life of mingled joy and sorrow 
from a coming one of faithful service. Behind them 
lies the field of holiday tournament, the castle of feast- 
ing, and the grave of him whom they loved better than 
life. Before them, stretching on to where the clouds 
drop down their mysterious folds, and even through 
them, lies the narrow path of duty which they are 
henceforth to tread urged on by their reverent memory 
of him, who can now lead them only by his undying 
memories and living spirit. And so their thoughts of the 
past are mingled with bright hopes for the future. 
They are to seek in all climes for the Holy Grail, and 
before them rise visions of the battles they hope to win, 
the gallant deeds they are determined to achieve ; but 
brightest and best of all is the hope of finding the 
Holy Vessel of the Grail. 

At last the adventurous train moved on, their ban- 
ners fluttering in the wind, their armor flashing in the 
sun, and their faces resolutely turned from the pleasant 
land they were leaving. 

And so, year after year, through repeated disappoint- 
ments and trying unsuccess, they struggled on in the 
fulfilment of their sacred vow. Scorning the attrac- 
tions of other pursuits, consecrating all their energies 
of body and soul to the holy work upon which they had 



THE HOLY GRAIL. II7 

entered, and following always the example of their 
king, they left for themselves the record of lives truly 
kingly — wonderful evidences of the strength and noble- 
ness which a single purpose, if only it be pure and 
lofty, ever gives to even the humblest efforts of men. 

To-day we stand here like those knights. Our Round 
Table, after four happy years of cheerful companion- 
ship, must be dissolved ; we must bid adieu to oitr noble 
Camelot, and gird on our armor for the life struggle 
which lies before us. We too look back upon the 
pleasant land we are leaving. There lie the bright 
fields of youth, and through the years that are gone 
come floating up, like peals of soft-tolling bells, mem- 
ories we cannot, would not forget. We too think of our 
loved classmate who was laid to rest one bright Sep- 
tember day. We think of our King Arthur who was 
called home in the very flush of his brilliant manhood. 

Why our noble leader was taken from us, just when 
we seemed to need him most — God only knows. We, 
like the knights of the olden time, are left to enter 
without him upon our quest in the untried regions of 
the future, where abide our fortunes. All the pain and 
sorrow of parting — of breaking up our Round Table — 
is doubled, trebled, because he is not here to give us 
his parting, blessing. 

But we too, like them, have bright hopes as well as 
sad memories. In fancy we see before us the ranges 
of Hope's haloed mountain-tops towering above a 
16 



Il8 THE HOLY GRAIL. 

verdant land, white with harvests of honors, happiness, 
and placid life. 

But if the prospect is enchanting, the retrospect is 
full of a sadder, a more potent charm, which makes us 
reluctant to say good-bye. 

Classmates: We are gathered for the last time. 
Never again, as a class, shall we pass together to the 
recitation or assemble in this room. The hour has 
come for us to bid farewell to each other and to the 
school which we have so learned to love. Very soon 
the reality of our school days will dwindle away into 
the dimness of the past, as the turrets of Camelot's 
fair halls faded from the sight of those cavaliers who 
were starting in quest of the Holy Grail ; but often 
in the heat of life's conflict will come back to us the 
memory of these days, and of these friends whom we 
are leaving — friends more generous and disinterested 
than we shall ever find again. We shall learn that the 
world is not all serenity and calm ; perfect happiness 
will evade us as the Holy Grail baffled the search of 
those knights. But let us remember which one of 
them approached nearest to the object of his hopes — 
it was the knight who girded on the pure white armor 
and lived a life of purity in thought, word, and deed. 
Amid all the " dust" of this world's conflict, let us keep 
undimmed our faith in the good and the true, and in 
the promise of fadeless honor in the world to come — 
forgetting not the palma of victory which the ransomed 



THE HOLY GRAIL. I IQ 

of the Lord will wave in the courts of his eternal 
temple, or the crowns to be given at last to each faithful 
soldier of the cross. 

We are not as many now as when we entered upon 
our High School life, four short years ago; nearly 
twice as many as our present number are away. Some 
have left us to join a preceding class, many have 
already gone to seek their fortunes here and there in 
our broad land, while one has gone a long way, even to 
"the undiscovered country." With full ranks and high 
hopes we entered upon this last and happiest year of 
our school life. But with the "melancholy days," with 
the "death of the flowers," one of our number left us — 
the gentle spirit of our classmate Arthur Snow opened 
to the bloom of the immortal life. The old year died 
away with its requiems for our departed one ; but the 
new year had scarce dawned when our beloved Prin- 
cipal, — ^?/r noble King Arthur, left us. and walked in 
Paradise. Ah ! we had never realized before how ten- 
derly we loved him, how highly we respected his noble 
manhood, how dependent we were upon him. Oh ! how 
loth we were to give him up! In our first selfish grief 
we cried, "We cannot let him go" — but God knew best. 

In bidding him our last tearful farewell we felt indeed 
that we were parting from a guide, a pattern, and a 
friend, one for whom our reverence was largely blended 
with affection. My classmates, it needs no words of 
mine to tell how we have missed his smile of benedic- 



I20 THE HOLY GRAIL. 

tion, his words of love which were always so powerful to 
teach us the inspiration of well-doing. We shall ever 
hold in grateful memory his noble example and patient 
teachings, and may we never forget that sublimest of 
all lessons which we have learned of him — how beau- 
tifully majesty of intellect may be united with humility 
of faith. O, let us try to follow his noble example, 
though it be imperfectly, and may his memory ever 
nerve us on to greater bravery and faithfulness, so that 
thinking on him and girding our hearts with silent 
fortitude, "suffering, yet hoping all things," we may 
one day walk beside him in the light of the imperial 
Salem, never more to say farewell. 



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